I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends
by Splinter Cell
Summary: AU. Harry’s 7th year promises to be eventful with a dodgy new DADA professor, NEWTS, Death Eaters and a new Slytherin intent on matchmaking him and Malfoy. A story of friendship and growing up. Eventually HD
1. Chapter 1 So it begins

**I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends**

Author: Splinter Cell

Rating: PG – rating will increase in later chapters.

Disclaimer: The concept of Harry Potter belongs to JKR. I'm just messin'.

Review: Email me at: or hit that little button at the bottom of the page.

AN: This was always meant to be – and I do hope that it is – a story about friendship and the struggles we encounter growing up. As for Irona? Well don't be put off by her name. She isn't a Mary Sue, nor a self-insert although I do think she's kick-ass cool. You can blame her and the shifting viewpoints and narrative styles on an experimental nature. Hopefully, everything has worked. Doubtless I won't have been able to keep everyone in character and while that is a disappointment, it's also to be expected since I didn't create the characters and am focussing on characters that JKR _doesn't_ – the Slytherins. However, if there are any major bloomers I would appreciate it if somebody points them out to me.

Finally, I'd like to thank all the authors on who, with their magnificent stories have possibly played a greater part in crafting this story than I have!

Many thanks

S.C.

Chapter1:

Harry Potter's seventh and final year started in much the same way as his other six had. Except - perhaps - his second. As thrilling an adventure as that had been, neither he nor Ron were willing to weather the repercussions again.

Now, the train journey over, he and Ron were watching as Hagrid herded the new first years into the boats before snagging a coach (the horses of which Ron still couldn't see) with Ginny, Neville and, to Harry's surprise, Luna Lovegood. He hadn't spoken with Luna much since his fifth year. He saw her around, often in the Library or just wandering the halls, but beyond the expected courtesies, they hadn't spoken. He didn't even know, he realised, if all of her belongings had reappeared that year.

He threw his school bag up onto the seat and clambered up after it, shoving it under the seat so as to keep it out of the way and turned to Luna whom - he wasn't surprised to see - had her head buried in another issue of the Quibbler. He smiled faintly; at least this one wasn't upside-down.

'Hi, Luna,' he said quietly as Ron, Ginny and Neville started a boisterous game of Exploding Snap.

Her head snapped up quickly, startled, her eyes blinking owlishly as she focussed on him. 'Oh hi, Harry,' she said dreamily, smiling at him in that vague way of hers. She looked exactly the same as she had two years ago although the cork necklace was gone, replaced with a string of small nacre shells. And shell earrings. There were even, he noted, shells braided into her hair. 'Did you have a good summer?' she asked him, aware of his scrutiny.

'Oh, er, yeah,' Harry mumbled, colouring slightly. 'You?'

Luna's smile lit up the entire carriage as she nodded enthusiastically. 'Oh yes! Dad and I went to Australia. It's very nice down there but it is a bit too hot, and it's very funny to hear their accents!' she giggled slightly at that last bit and even Harry had to smile at the thought of Australian wizards. 'We went snorkelling and swimming and Dad tried surfing but he kept falling off.'

'Nice beaches huh?' said Harry wistfully, thinking of the hard, painful pebbles of Brighton.

'Ooh, very.' A frown flickered across her forehead. 'Though the sand does tend to get everywhere and sometimes it's quite unpleasant. I liked the shell beaches better. I like shells,' she added, just in case Harry hadn't been able to figure that out.

They shared a companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the increasingly boisterous game that was going on. Ron was losing, somewhat spectacularly and to Neville of all people and he wasn't taking defeat quietly.

'YOU CHEATED! YOU CHEATING LITTLE SO-AND-SO!'

'Ron, calm down. Ron...'

'SO THAT'S HOW COME YOU'RE WINNING... IF I DIDN'T KNOW BETTER I'D SAY YOU WERE A SLYTHERIN!'

'You're leaving this year,' Luna pointed out suddenly. When Harry looked up, she was watching intently.

'Yeah. Yeah I am.'

'Are you going to miss Hogwarts?'

Harry shrugged. He hadn't really thought about, to be honest; the final act of leaving, of saying goodbye to people he'd in truth never see again was still a year away. 'Sure. I guess.'

'I won't,' Luna replied with absolute certainty and none of her usual absent-mindedness. 'I think I'll be glad to leave.'

Harry wanted to ask her why but even as he opened his mouth to ask the question, he stopped himself. He knew why she wouldn't miss Hogwarts, and he couldn't blame her.

He looked back over at Luna, who was staring out of the coach window, lost in her own world again, the Quibbler hanging loosely between her fingers. The observation that she really was extraordinarily pretty pushed it's way to the forefront of Harry's brain and presented itself for examination. She really was, he decided after a few minutes careful thought. Her long hair was still a dirty dishwater-blonde colour and her eyes were still slightly too large for her face but in the two intervening years she had grown and filled out and her figure was not unpleasing and Harry found that her vague, dreamy manner charmed him, rather than irritated him as it had the first time he had met her.

Harry found himself knocked from his thoughts as the coach hit a particularly bumpy stretch of road and they were all thrown around. There were a series of loud exclamations from Ron, Ginny and Neville as their cards went flying and a loud, angry croak from Trevor as the elderly toad's cage slid off the luggage rack and was narrowly saved by Ron.

Luna, shells jingling softly blinked and looked up again, smiling softly at Harry as she put a hand to the side of her head. 'Oh dear,' she murmured.

'What's wrong?'

'I think I must have hit my head on the window,' she said.

'Is it cut?' Harry asked, leaning forward to see if he could blood on her hair.

Luna took her hand away and showed him. No blood. 'I don't think so, but it does hurt.' She looked around and then spotted her magazine on the floor. She picked it up and was quickly engrossed in it once more.

'Oi, Harry!' Ron had finished retrieving the last of the cards and was holding them out to Harry. 'You want in?'

Harry shook his head and jerked his thumb out the window. 'No point, we're here.'

'Already? Blimey, that was quick.'

Harry watched the castle grow bigger as they approached. In the darkness, the castle and its towers were defined by the lights that shone through the many windows. Gold and white and in a few cases, red, all reflecting on the surface of the lake. It was the same sight he had seen seven years ago and it still caused something to jump inside him, the same shiver of anxiety and anticipation.

The coach juddered to a halt and this time, even Ron couldn't save Trevor from a nasty fall. Neville took the croaking toad out of his cage and held him to his chest, trying to soothe the disturbed creature.

'He's all right, Neville,' Harry said laughing as he jumped out of the coach and turned to give Luna a hand down. 'Listen to him! He's just shaken up.'

Ron came to stand beside him as Harry stood looking up at Hogwarts.

'Last time we're ever going to be doing this,' he told Ron.

'Yeah. I'm going to miss the Feast,' he joked and then turned around, pulling Harry with him. 'Better go get our stuff. Weird setup, don't you think, having everyone's luggage in one coach?'

'It's because that Hufflepuff got crushed by hers last year.'

'Oh great,' Ron groused, 'So this time, Pig will get crushed instead?'

'Nothing will have got crushed,' Harry assured him, but sped up his pace towards the farthest coach nonetheless. If something, anything had happened to Hedwig...

'By the way, have you seen Hermione?'

'Yeah,' Ron said, 'she went in with Parvarti and Lavender.'

That news stopped Harry dead in his tracks. He'd thought she was ill. Or else had missed the Express, no matter how un-Hermione that might be. Why else wouldn't she have sat with them...?

Ron had already levitated out their trunks and was passing Hedwig's cage to him. She was a little ruffled by the ride but otherwise unharmed.

'Come on, Harry, or else we're going to be late!'

'POTTER! WEASLEY!'

'Uh-oh,' Ron breathed as he and Harry skidded to a halt at McGonagall's furious shout.

'No, don't _stop_!' she said desperately.

'Are you OK, Professor?' Ron asked; his face reflecting only concern on the behalf of his Head of House but in his eyes was the same devilish twinkle that Harry was used to seeing in Fred and George's right before they executed one of their schemes.

Despite the number of years McGonagall had been responsible for the first years, this year she was struggling. They surrounded her in a heaving black swarm, none of them coming above her waist and resisting every effort to make them shut up and behave. In the last few years, Harry had become quite used to seeing the utter look of soul-deep desperation in the eyes of his reflection but had never seen it in anyone else. Until now.

For a moment however, helplessness was replaced with anger as McGonagall rounded on Ron and gave him a look he'd last seen directed at Dolores Jane Umbridge. 'Get in there!' she rasped, 'And the rest of you SHUT UP!'

Harry and Ron made their way past her quickly - heads down to hide their grins and hands over their mouths - as her last words were drowned out by the children around her. In all probability McGonagall was too busy with her young flock to bother with them but with her nerves and patience as frayed as they were, neither boy wanted to take that chance.

They pushed the large double doors open slowly and slid inside, faces reddening as everyone in the Great Hall turned to face them.

'Um.' Harry said into the gathering silence. At the far end of the Great Hall, there was a scrape of wood on stone as Dumbledore pushed his chair back and rose to his feet. Instead, however, of the slight disappointed look Harry had expected, he merely smiled at them and winked. 'Ah Harry. Ron. Come in, come in. You're just in time,' he said quietly but with no little warmth.

Mumbling their thanks, Harry and Ron made their way swiftly to the Gryffindor tables, Harry spotting Hermione up at the far end with Lavender and Parvarti. He started walking towards her until he saw that there was only one seat next to Hermione and that it was Seamus and Dean sitting with her.

'Oi, Harry! Come on!'

Harry turned at Ron's hushed whisper and saw that his friend was already sitting with Ginny and Neville and was gesturing at him to sit down. With nowhere else to sit and all eyes still on him, Harry sat down and looked up the table. Hermione hadn't looked up once.

'Now that we are all here-' Dumbledore began, with another small smile in Harry's direction, '-we may continue. Professor McGonagall?' he called out, the cue for the first years to be led in and be Sorted.

This time, however, when the doors opened, all that could immediately heard was McGonagall struggling trying to impose some order on the first years.

'..._what are you doing? Oh for Merlin's sake, child... No, put that down, PUT IT DOWN... Will you all be QUIET?!_...'

There was a ripple of laughter through the room, hushed quickly as Professor Dumbledore cleared his throat.

'Ah, Minerva?' he called out again, his face impassive and serious but Harry picked up an undeniable smile in the words. 'Are you quite all right out there?'

McGonagall appeared in the doorway, having seemingly fought – and lost - a pitched battle in the intervening few minutes. Her hat was askew and strands of her steel grey hair had escaped from the iron-tight bun at the nape of her neck. Face flushed and eyes shining, she gave Dumbledore a wobbly smile. 'I think so, Headmaster, yes.' She paused, hand to her chest as though she were having trouble breathing. 'Yes, we'll just be a moment.' And then she was gone and all that could be heard was her final, beseeching pleas to her charges. 'Quiet, QUIET! All right, now if you'll make a line and file in after me – _silence_ – that's not a line! You there, yes, you, come here, no, no, no don't. All right, fine, whatever, just be _quiet_ when we go in.'

And in they came, McGonagall looking every one of her seventy-odd years at their head as she carried the Sorting Hat and stool to the dais in front of the High Table. She was quite calm and composed battling Voldemort and his Death Eaters, Harry mused, remembering, but a handful of new first year students had completely managed to take her apart in less than twenty minutes.

'I'll bet McG's looking forward to the year huh, Harry? Ginny whispered, leaning across the table.

He winked at her and went back to looking at the High Table. Hagrid was there, towering at least a meter above tiny Professor Flitwick beside him. Sprout, Vector, Trelawney in a hideous lime green and scarlet number that made Harry feel nauseous just looking at it. There was Snape at the other end of the table, sitting rigidly upright and scowling as usual, possibly due to the fact that he was sandwiched between Madams Hooch and Pomfrey who were busy conducting a whispered conversation behind his back.

'Hey look!' Harry whispered to Ron and pointed to the shabby-looking man sat the other side of Madam Hooch. 'It's Professor Lupin! He's back.'

'But who's that beside him?' Ron replied.

The person in question was a woman who Harry guessed to be in her mid- to late thirties and Harry had the immediate feeling that he didn't like her. From what Harry could see, she was wearing a black dress with a black cloak clasped at her throat with a silver brooch. Harry had once come across the word 'patrician' in a badly-written book his aunt had. It had been used to describe the features of the hero's arch-rival and though Harry hadn't been able to picture the character then, he thought now that 'patrician' was quite an apt description. Her face would have been noble, her features called refined had they not been so cold.

In the way she surveyed the Hall, she was obviously a teacher but in her bearing and manner, she strongly reminded Harry of someone else.

'I heard Lucy Quillan talking about her on the train. She said she'd seen her and Malfoy talking together.'

Ron rolled his eyes at Neville. 'So? That doesn't mean anything.'

'Might explain something though,' Harry mused out loud and nodded over to the Slytherin tables, 'does she remind you all of someone?'

As one they all turned to stare at Malfoy. He was chatting quietly to a third-year boy whose name Harry thought might have been Smythe and was completely unaware of being scrutinised from afar until Pansy caught sight of them and reached across to tap him on the shoulder. Harry felt himself colour as Draco looked up and straight at him, mouthed something Harry couldn't catch and went back to his conversation.

'Yeah,' Ron muttered. 'Definitely.'

Ginny wasn't so easily convinced. 'Oh sure, there's similarities but the Malfoy's are blonde, if any of you boys haven't noticed, she's got black hair. And anyway,' she added triumphantly, 'everyone knows the Malfoys support You-know-Who – sorry, Harry – there's no way Dumbledore would employ a Malfoy.'

Ron and Neville agreed that no, there was no way Dumbledore would hire someone from such a family but Harry wasn't sure. Dumbledore had made a series of bad decisions when it came to employing DADA teachers. First Quirrell who had housed the spirit of Voldemort in his body, then the fraudster Lockhart, Barty Crouch Jr. And the only reason Dumbledore would hire a new teachers was for the DADA position.

His attention was caught by Professor McGonagall calling out the last name; 'Zane, William.' Harry watched as Zane, William slunk up to the stool as though he wished to disappear, which he then did when he picked the Hat up and placed it on his head.

'SLYTHERIN!' it yelled and Zane, William slunk over to the last remaining chair at the cheering Slytherin tables.

Beside Harry, Ron muttered a heartfelt 'Thank Merlin,' and picked up his knife and fork in readiness for the food that was about to appear. He couldn't help a loud groan escaping as McGonagall rustled her parchment, cleared her throat for quiet and called out one last name.

'How in Merlin's name...? Highly irregular... de Mordechai-Voltaire, Irona.'

The Hall erupted in muttering as a girl who couldn't possibly be a first year stepped out of the shadows beside the staff table and came to stand by the Sorting Hat.

'You are Irona de Mordechai-Voltaire?' McGonagall asked her, peering at the girl over the top of her parchment and looking to the Headmaster for guidance.

The girl's voice when she answered was perfectly calm and composed and Harry's suspicions were confirmed when he glanced over and saw Malfoy watching her intently. 'Yes,' she said simply, 'I've been transferred here for my last year.'

With a last glance at Dumbledore, McGonagall gestured at her to sit down and she did so, placing the Sorting Hat carefully on her head.

'Harry, what the hell is going on here?' Ron asked him furiously but Harry had no answer.

'I don't know-' he was cut off by Ginny.

'Nobody changes school for the last year! She'll have missed too much.'

Neville hushed them quickly as the rip in the Sorting Hat opened and it yelled; 'SLYTHERIN!'

The Slytherin tables burst into applause again and Harry saw Malfoy clapping harder than anyone else.

Ron followed his gaze and scowled. 'What's he so pleased about?' he asked suspiciously and Harry shook his head.

'It's not good,' he said with absolute certainty and watched the girl as she stood back up and taking a few steps towards the Slytherin tables, see that no seats were available and turn to look at back McGonagall for assistance.

'She's got to be joking,' was Ginny's choked comment when to their collective disbelief, McGonagall led her over to the empty chair beside Hermione.

'I have only a few quick announcements to make,' Dumbledore started to a chorus of groans, 'And the sooner that I get through them, the sooner the Feast can begin. As all of you have no doubt realised, we welcome back Professor Lupin this year as our Defence Against the Dark Arts-' there was another loud cheer '-thank you. However, we are also privileged this year to welcome Professor Lillith de Malfoi who will be assisting the NEWT level students. Professor Malfoi has been teaching at Beauxbatons for the last twelve years and comes with the very highest recommendation from Headmistress Maxime.' There was another round of applause which Malfoi acknowledged with a slight bow of her head.

'We will be announcing the school's Head boy and Head Girl on Friday-' there was a surge of excited chatter at this as a number of students turned their attention to Harry Potter '– and I urge all seventh years who wish to be considered for these posts to write their names in a special book that we shall place outside the Great Hall tonight by Wednesday at the latest please. Lastly, a big welcome to all of you who have joined us this year and to those who have returned. Let us begin!' and with those words, the food appeared and the Hall filled with the sounds of over five hundred-odd students enthusiastically tucking into the delicacies that appeared before them.

Last year, Hermione had expressed outrage at Hogwarts' use of food, saying that the wastage made her sick and that wizards were apparently no better than Muggles when it came to consumerism and selectively forgetting that there are starving people in the world. Harry and Ron had written it off as just another of Hermione's pet projects, like S.P.E.W, and so paid it little attention. Little attention, that is, until she went on hunger strike. It had ended after ten days when Hermione had collapsed in Ancient Runes and spent the next three days in the Hospital Wing under Madam Pomfrey's no-nonsense care.

Now, glancing up the table again, Harry was glad to see that, unlike S.P.E.W which was still hanging in there, her protest against food had died a deserved death. Like every other student in the Hall, she was tucking in to the food around her with great gusto and, as Harry watched, heaping roast beef onto Irona's plate, despite the latter's half-hearted, laughing protests.

Beside him, Ron had caught sight of them too and was watching them darkly. 'No fucking way,' he hissed and sent his chair toppling as he got up.

'Ron, wait-!' Harry called but Ron was already walking towards Hermione, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

Ginny looked from Harry to her brother and back again. 'Harry?' she asked him, 'what's going on?'

'Nothing good,' he replied and hurried after Ron. Up at the teacher's table, Snape was watching them intently, his face as dark as Ron's and out of the corner of his eye Harry saw that Malfoy, too, was making his way over to them.

By now Ron had stopped by Hermione's chair but he was looking at Irona, and his next words were spoken to her. 'What are you doing, Hermione, talking to this piece of filth?'

His words were spoken calmly enough in spite of his white face and even whiter knuckles and carried clearly to the furthest student. There was an intake of breath as the Hall waited for the Slytherin to respond.

But she didn't. Hermione did, even as Harry, Malfoy and Snape converged on them.

'How dare you speak to her like that, Ronald Weasley,' Hermione said, her voice quiet but her eyes as fierce as Ron's.

'How dare I?' Ron shot back furiously, 'HOW DARE YOU BETRAY US BY SPEAKING TO SCUM LIKE HER! SHE'S DEATH EATER FILTH!'

It happened too quickly for Harry to be able to do anything. One moment the Hall was still and quiet, watching the events unfold with grim fascination and then, then there was pandemonium.

He didn't see Hermione's hand move but suddenly Ron was staggering back, his face a picture of shock as he raised one hand to the blossoming red mark on his left cheek and then Harry watched shock turn to anger and caught his arms as he made to lunge towards her, yelling mindlessly.

'Weasley! WEASLEY!' Billowing black robes as Professor Snape came racing towards them.

Draco was pulling Irona to her feet and away from the table. She looked as though she might be sick.

In his grasp, Ron was struggling madly. 'Damnit, Ron!' Harry yelled as one of his elbows found its way into his stomach. Ron twisted to the right and landed another elbow in Harry's gut and Harry wasn't able to hold onto him any longer. Ron lunged forwards and was tackled by Dean, who caught him round the waist and sent them both crashing to the floor.

'Release him, Mr. Thomas,' It was Snape, face like thunder and his wand drawn, stepping round Harry who was bent double and fighting to regain his breath and coming to stand over Ron, wand pointed unwaveringly at his throat. Reluctantly, Dean released his hold on Ron and got to his feet and stepped away, out of the reach of Snape's wand. 'To your feet, boy,' he ordered but Ron just glared at him from where he lay, his nose bloody from striking the stone floor when Dean had tackled him. 'I won't repeat myself,' Snape warned him and Ron slowly got up, the fight not gone out of him despite the pain evident in every movement.

'Mr. Malfoy,' Snape called out without taking his eyes or wand away from Ron. 'I think it would be best if you were to take Miss de Mordechai-Voltaire to the Slytherin Common Room and show her to her dorm room. She is sharing with Miss Parkinson and Miss Bulstrode.'

'Of course, Professor.' Draco replied and the two Slytherins left the Great Hall without looking back.

Harry saw Professor Dumbledore rise to his feet at the head table. There was a great sadness in his words as he addressed the Potions Master. 'Professor Snape. If you would care to take Mr. Weasley to my office, I will be along shortly.' Snape nodded his acknowledgement and marched Ron out of the Great Hall, still at wand-point. As soon as they had left, Dumbledore turned his attention back to the rest of the students. 'Despite the incident that has just taken place, I implore you all to enjoy the rest of the Feast if that is at all possible. Professor McGonagall?'

'You all right, Harry?' Dean asked him as soon as they had left and the Hall erupted.

Still unable to stand up entirely straight, Harry nodded and forced a small smile. 'He's got bloody sharp elbows.'

'Yeah,' Dean laughed, 'I can imagine he does. You want to sit down?' he asked him, gesturing at the seat next to him.

'Where's Hermione gone?' Harry asked, looking around. 'I'm sure I didn't see her leave.'

'Slipped out after Snape took Ron away. Harry?'

'Er, you know what, Dean? I'm feeling pretty fragile, I think I'll go lie down or something. OK?'

'Sure Harry,' Dean said with a shrug. He turned away to sit back down. 'Whatever you want.'

Almost as soon as the doors had closed behind them, Irona pulled away from Draco and went over to perch on the bottom step of the stairs and buried her head in her arms.

'Irona?' he asked, 'What's wrong?'

She was quiet for a long moment and then looked up at him and forced a smile. 'Oh, nothing really,' she said unconvincingly and brushed the dust from her robes as she stood up. 'I'm just being silly.'

'It's Weasley.' He stated simply and came over to stand in front of her.

She rewarded him with a wan smile and settled back down onto the step with a sigh. 'It was a nice welcome.'

Draco shrugged. 'I told you what he would be like.'

'Yes, I suppose you did.'

'So why let it bother you?' he said, a little exasperation entering his voice. 'What were you expecting? For him not to say anything after what happened this summer?'

'Don't snap at me!' she replied hotly and then added, 'I'm sorry. It's just—it's my first day here Draco!'

He reached down to help her up. 'I know it is and you know I'm glad you're here. Forget about Potter's pathetic friends.' That earned him a little laugh.

'You know...the Mudblood's really quite all right.'

'Excuse me?' he asked her, unable to mask his incredulity and Irona burst out laughing, pointing at his eye as she fought to regain her breath.

'Your...heh...your...ohgod...your eyebrow Draco!' she managed to gasp out and then collapsed into fresh hysterics again as Draco's hand flew to his eyebrow.

'Shut up!' he said, hiding the offending eyebrow and trying his hardest not to smirk. It wasn't easy; Irona had one of those truly infectious laughs that had a habit of inducing similar laughter in others. 'Shut up!'

Giggling almost too hard to talk, she cupped his face in her hands and fixed him with a mischievous look. 'Ooh, hit a nerve, have I, Malfoy?'

He pulled away and drew himself up to his full height. 'As if you could,' he sneered with all the haughtiness that being a Malfoy and the undisputed king of Slytherin had given him.

Irona faltered for just a moment, a flicker of emotion flashing across her features before she recovered and poked him in the gut, hard. 'Don't you go using that tone of voice with me, Draco,' she growled, not entirely in jest as he clutched at his stomach and scowled at her. 'Besides,' she added, lightly, all mischief again, 'the thing's got a life of its own. You could be a circus double-act. 'Draco Malfoy and His Amazing Moving Eyebrow'.'

'Well, it's good to know I have other options open to me if everything goes very wrong.' His sarcasm was cutting but Irona let it slide over her and smiled beatifically.

'Hmm. I was thinking of moving over to France and picking grapes in the vineyards for the rest of my life.'

Draco almost laughed at the image of Irona in traditional French rural clothes before he picked up on what she hadn't said. 'You haven't heard anything, then?' he asked her, picking his words with care.

She deflated at the question, the levity of a few minutes ago gone as she shook her head. 'They're dead,' she said bluntly, a grim smile on her lips. 'They just haven't died yet. I just have to accept that now.'

He said nothing in reply to that. An expression of how sorry he was for her pending loss? There was nothing that he could say to her that would help. This burden was hers to carry and hers alone. 'Let's go to the Common Room,' he offered and she nodded quickly.

'Of course. Where is it?'

He pointed down the flight of steps that descended into the dungeons. 'Down there.'

Had he been able, Draco might have photographed the look on her face right at that moment. 'You have got to be joking.' He told her in no uncertain terms that he wasn't and she swore softly. In all the years of their correspondence, Draco had often told her that Slytherins weren't thought well of in the school but he'd never said anything about this. 'The dungeons. That's got to be about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the head.'

'Not quite. Great Salazar himself allotted the dungeons as the home of his House,' he explained as he led her down the steps and into the bowels of the Castle. 'He believed that success was greater when the ambition behind it was tempered with humility, the knowledge that we all start from the bottom. Insignificant. Powerless.'

Irona nodded to herself. 'Makes sense,' and it did. Salazar's dungeons had produced the greatest number of powerful wizards in the last half century and whilst a good number of them had been Dark wizards and put their power to destructive uses, a greater number had devoted their life to ensuring the peace and stability of the Wizarding world with the same ambition and tremendous drive.

There was just one little detail... 'But Draco, could He not have made the dungeons - I don't know - nicer?'

Because they truly were foul. There were torches situated every few meters, enchanted so that would never be extinguished and though they cast a light that might have been cheery in any other corridor, they couldn't disguise the fact that they were walking through the dungeons. The walls were damp, the air was icy and cloying with the smelt of dead and decomposing animal and the further down they descended, the more treacherous the steps became; steep, smooth from the centuries of use and slippery with moisture until at last – Irona cursing and slipping almost the entire way – the steps finished and they were standing in a smaller, colder, generally bleaker version of the entrance hall above them.

Three large archways faced her for they had entered by the fourth. Draco immediately set about summarising what there was to be found down all of them. The dungeons extended for as far as the school did, he explained. The archway to her right was completely unlit and led into a labyrinthine maze of old and disused rooms that had been used as food stores, a morgue, armoury and even prison for the years through which Hogwarts had served not only as school but as military stronghold and fortress. The archway to her left was the complete opposite. Well-lit and even inviting, it led into a maze of old classrooms. There was Professor Snape's Potion's classroom, his work rooms and his private quarters. The third and central archway was also the strangest for there seemed to be a wall built a way behind it, as though whatever corridor lay behind it had been bricked over. In the centre of this curious wall was a large painting in an elaborate gilt frame from which an old and stern-looking man glared out.

Her curiosity overpowering her, Irona walked forward to study it more closely. Up close, she could see that it was actually quite badly painted; his body was out of proportion, the features of his face subtly wrong - his eyes were too far apart, the nose too close to the mouth, his ears were set too low on the side of his head – the perspective, the colours, everything. It was a painting that had quite clearly been painted by someone who had not yet grasped the fundamentals of drawing and painting.

'How curious!' she murmured and glanced back at Draco who was watching her from the stairwell. 'This, I take it, does lead to our dormitories?' she asked him and received a nod.

How very interesting. Apart from this painting, the wall was as ordinary as every other, the stone cold and rough to the touch....and incontrovertibly solid!

She turned back to Draco and gestured at the wall behind her. 'How—' she began but was suddenly cut off by an irritated growl coming from behind her. She jumped and whirled round to find the man in the painting had moved position and was now scowling at her darkly, hands resting on his hips. 'A-_hem_!'

Irona took a step backwards in surprise and flushed with embarrassment. 'I'm sor—'

The painting cut off her apology with a curt, 'Quiet!' He folded his arms across his chest and regarded her with disinterest. 'You're not very bright, are you girl?' he remarked as though commenting about the weather. 'That wasn't a question!' he snapped, when he saw Irona open her mouth to reply. 'Really not very bright at all. And you're not much better!' he added, shifting his gaze past Irona to Draco. '"King of Slytherin"? Ha! I remember when Slytherins were respected, when they were feared. People looked over their shoulders before they talked about them, and then only in whispers.' The painting turned away, too disgusted with the two Slytherins that he couldn't stomach the sight of them. 'I remember...'

'Times change,' said Draco mildly as he came up to stand beside her. It was an argument that had been going on for a long time, Irona guessed.

The painting whirled round, stabbing a furious finger in Draco's direction. 'And that's your excuse is it?' It snarled. '"Times change"? Well indeed they do boy, and indeed they have, and it's now that Slytherins need to be strong, stronger than they've ever been before! The Clans need a leader to guide them through these perilous times! Strong, dynamic, ruthless... someone like your grandfather, or even your father. Instead what have we got? You!'

Draco paled at the vehemence of the attack and glared right back at the man in the photo. 'That's enough from you,' he bit out but the painting just laughed.

'Or what?' he asked contemptuously and swung open before Draco could respond, revealing a large hole that led to the Slytherin Common Room. Draco climbed through and Irona followed him, the portrait slamming shut behind her quickly.

'What was all that about?' she asked as she straightened up...and stopped as she took stock of her surroundings. 'Oh...wow.'

She felt like Alice, falling down the rabbit hole...

The Common Room was quite clearly enchanted; even had she been blind, she would still have been able to tell that much. It was a mark of the spell-craft of the creators that although she could sense the magic in the room, that sense was fleeting.

It felt real, so much so that although she knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that they were in the dungeons, she was having a hard time actually convincing herself of that for the far wall was dominated by two great windows that reached up to the vaulted ceiling above her. Just like in the Great hall, they were enchanted to show the grounds outside. The Quidditch goalposts standing proud against a stormy twilight sky. The absolute shadow of the Forbidden Forest far towards the horizon. Even...part of another tower stretching upwards into the sky.

The illusion was perfect. The cool smoothness of the glass under her fingers, the condensation that appeared on it as she breathed out, even down to the muffled boom of thunder outside. Thick velvet curtains of the richest green hung either side of the windows, tied to the wall with braided silver ties as thick as her wrist.

But as impressive as the size of the room was, the vaulted ceiling with its thick oak beams and the windows (quite clearly the pièce de résistance), it was the smaller details that caught her attention. The leather armchairs, high-backed and well-worn. The tarnish on the face of the grandfather clock that stood in one shadowed corner. She walked slowly round the room, noting the gas lamps, the mahogany tables and chairs, the floorboards... even the wallpaper – cream and green.

'Well it certainly looks real enough,' she murmured and turned to Draco with a challenging smile. 'But what about the other senses?' For that was where the weakness of most illusions lay.

Draco met her challenge with one of his own. 'Knock yourself out.'

On the wall to the left of the portrait hall was a large fireplace. Draco had settled himself in one of the numerous over-stuffed armchairs ranged around it. The fire was burning low and it crackled and spat when Draco placed another log onto it. Sound.

As for smell...there were so many smells that she was only able to positively identify the rich, musty smell of leather and the sweet, cloying aroma of wood smoke.

That left taste and she was willing to assume that had she actually tasted anything in the room, it would have tasted exactly like it should have. She made her way back over to the fireplace and settled into the armchair next to Draco's, reaching out her hands to warm them.

'Satisfied?'

She watched the shadows change as she moved her hands as she answered. 'It's flawless. Like something out of an Arthur Conan Doyle novel. 'Who did it? It must have taken ages.' There was even a lace doily on the table next to her, impossibly delicate.

'We all did, in the fifth year. You can imagine what it was like before this.'

She could, all too well. 'Does Professor Snape know about this?'

Draco grinned at a memory. 'It was his idea. He was getting fed up with all our complaints. Are you feeling better now?'

Irona shrugged and looked away. 'I guess.'

'After the Feast's finished I'll introduce you to Blaise and the others. They can't wait to see you again.'

'Like they'll even remember me. It must be at least four, maybe five years since I met them.'

Draco he got up, stretching cramped muscles. 'Well,' he said gesturing vaguely, 'they're looking forward to renewing an old acquaintance. Look, I've got to go back to the Feast.'

'Oh...' she faltered but recovered quickly, masking her disappointment with another big smile and a too-equable 'Yeah, sure, if you've got to go, then you've got to go.'

Draco watched her for a moment and then nodded. 'All right. Professor Snape instructed the House-elves to take your luggage up to your dorm.' He pointed over her shoulder at two shadowy stairwells on the opposite wall. 'Take the one on the left. Your room is –conveniently enough – the second on the right.'

'OK.'

He turned back to her at the portrait hole. 'I'm happy to stay if you need me to,' he said but Irona caught the emotion in his voice that belied his words. There was something he needed to do, someone he needed to see and Irona wasn't going to inconvenience him even more than she already had. She forced a smile and shook her head. 'Go,' she told him and was a little surprised that she hadn't said 'Stay'. 'Go!' she repeated, pointing at the portrait hole and this seemed to do the trick. With a click, the portrait swung open and Draco was gone.

'And...you've gone,' she muttered and sighed. Well, she had told him to. 'I just, maybe, sort of, hoped that he wouldn't,' she told the empty Common Room and then had to laugh at her own stupidity. She looked around the room again and ambled over to the two sets of stairs. No torches lit these and with no handrails, she stumbled her way up the left hand one slowly and with great difficulty. Twenty steps and two stubbed toes later, the steps finished and she found herself in a narrow hall, only wide enough for two people to pass if both flattened themselves against the wall and it would still be a squeeze.

Unlike the stairway, the hall was lit by more enchanted torches recessed into the walls. She walked down the hall and saw that halfway along, there was another short passageway that branched off to the right and which led into another long matching hallway with another set of rooms which were setback to back with the others. She walked back through and found her room easily enough for it was the only one which was open and there was a small, neat pile of her personal belongings arranged next to the farthest bed.

Coming from the Common Room, the dorms were a little bit of let down, she reflected as she began sorting through her stuff. The room was small and cramped; the equivalent, she guessed, of one of the larger cells in Azkaban and the atmosphere was much the same. Grey stone walls, grey stone floors, windowless and lit by another small torch. Her bed creaked with every small movement and the sheet and pillow had faded to grey as well. The only colour in the room were the green quilts and the random assortment of bright pictures the other girls had cut out of magazines and stuck onto the walls.

It's a prison cell, she muttered as she sat down on the edge of her bed. Her books were all sorted ready for tomorrow and a broomstick she hadn't used for years safely stowed under her bed and now she was at a loss for what to do for an unknown length of time. Judging by the amount of food that had appeared, the Feast looked as though it might last all night in which case she might as well just go to bed.

She flopped back onto the bed and stared up at the grey stone ceiling and murmured, 'Come on, Draco.'

'Well, here we are,' Draco announced, stopping in front of a heavy oaken door that had been left slightly ajar for its new occupant. He pushed it wide and turned to take Malfoi's bag from her and set it down by the door. 'So what do you think?'

'Mon dieu..! ' she whispered as she surveyed the room. 'Words fail me!'

'I think Beauxbatons has spoiled you, godmother.'

'Oh and living at the Manor has not spoiled you?' she replied swiftly. 'We are both of us far too accustomed the high life, Monsieur Malfoy. If I am truthful, it is not so bad.' She matched Draco's incredulous look with a passive one of her own and explained, 'I have a double bed, and I have a fire. I have my own bathroom, my own workroom and with a little effort, I can be comfortable enough. All that is lacking is a window.' She walked over to the bed and sat down with a little sigh. 'Non, it is not so bad at all.'

Draco shrugged. 'Good, 'cause there's nothing you can do about it.'

'Because,' she corrected him absently and then beckoned Draco over to her. 'Look at you!' she murmured as he came to stand a few feet away. She reached out one gloved hand to cup his cheek, a wistful expression settling across her features. 'You were only eight when I saw you last, Draco, and so small... Quite the dashing young man now! You look so like your father.'

Draco almost unconsciously swelled with pride at that. 'Really?' he asked, a little sceptically for all of his parent's friends were always telling him how much he resembled his mother.

She nodded. 'Oh yes. Very like him when he was your age although he liked to wear his hair shorter then and didn't play Quidditch.'

'He still disapproves of it; calls it 'A graceless, undignified game played by those who use brawn to disguise a lack of brain',' he quoted, imitating his father's voice perfectly and Malfoi laughed, clapping her hands in appreciation.

'He still says that? Just because he didn't have the talent...' she trailed off and they both shared a mischievous smile. 'You look so similar, and yet I can still remember when you barely reached my waist. Children grow up so fast...' she murmured, looking at her hands where they lay folded in her lap and when she looked back up, Draco was surprised to see regret in her eyes. 'I'm sorry I missed your growing up, Draco.'

'It's been too long,' Draco replied, somewhat surprised by how changed his godmother was from how he remembered her. He had never thought of her as one to indulge in sentimentality of any kind. Not uncaring, not unkind but plain-spoken and intolerant of foolish behaviour although he had always looked forward to her visits and they had always had fun together. Then again, he mused, twelve years ago he had been a child and had accordingly viewed his world with a child's perspective. 'Why did you stop visiting? You never even sent me a letter.'

'I have been busy, Draco, these last years. I had to sort out the mess my mother left me when she died; I had my teaching post at Beauxbatons. For a long time Draco I was being sent hither and thither all over the world. I barely knew where I was from day to day! I just never had time.'

'No time.' Draco repeated bluntly and she grimaced.

'Je suis desolé, Draco, I really am, but I am here now and here I will remain for as long as Professor Dumbledore is happy to have me. I am so _bored_ of Beauxbatons and between you and I,' she added, lowering her voice to that of a conspiratorial whisper, 'Olympe Maxime is as glad to be rid of me as I am to be rid of her!'

'So that's why she recommends you so highly?'

'Quite! She let her personal problems with me influence her professional choices. When Hogwarts' Governors broached the idea of a liaison between the two schools, I think she may have blocked the applications of a couple of teachers just so that she would be rid of me! As though I had any wish to remain.'

'What did you disagree with her on?'

'Anything and everything. She is one of those people who cannot stand having their opinions challenged..' Malfoi spread her hands in a 'what-can-you-do' gesture. 'It's her loss, mon cher; she'll find it hard to replace me, though I say it myself.'

'Mon cher?'

She raised an elegant eyebrow enquiringly. 'My dear. Don't tell me your father has been neglectful of your language tuition?'

'A little,' Draco admitted. 'What with everything that has been going on. Besides, he says, the rest of the world speaks English now so there's no reason to learn foreign languages.'

'How very like him! Let everyone else do the hard work for him.' She winked at him to take the sting out of her words. 'A brief stint in the real world might do your father the world of good. He is far too used to having others do for him.'

Draco couldn't hide his surprise at this. 'Didn't you have elves at Beauxbatons?'

'Of course, but I never trusted the damn things. How could I afford to?'

Draco sobered suddenly at his godmother's words. 'Father said you might have something to tell me.'

'I do,' she said equally sober.

'Why didn't he just owl it to me, though? Surely that would have been easier?'

'It would have been very foolish,' she replied curtly. 'Did you fail to notice the Aurors on the train, Draco?

Indeed he hadn't. There had been one stationed at both ends of the Express and another two who had patrolled the carriages and although Dumbledore had made no mention of him, Draco had nonetheless recognised the man standing in the shadows at the end of the Great Hall. Alastor Moody was not an easy man to forget.

'But why-?'

'Think, Draco,' she said cutting him off sharply and that was more like the Lillith Draco remembered. 'Albus Dumbledore is no fool. He knows that our Lord will be looking to recruit from Slytherin's House this year and I'm sure he has his suspicions about whom He is likely to try and recruit. He knows he cannot afford not to intercept all owl post to and from his students. He knows.'

'And that's what he wanted you to tell me, isn't it? Something about Voldemort?'

Malfoi flinched hard at the name. 'Do not say his name!' she hissed. 'Stupid boy! Has your father told you nothing of Hogwarts? It is an institution of Light, Draco. A stronghold of the Order of the Phoenix. In this place no evil can flourish. It's why Dumbledore will not leave this place, and why he wishes to keep Harry Potter here for as long as possible.' She paused for a moment and softened slightly, continuing in a gentler tone of voice. 'But yes, what your father wishes me to tell you does concern that. Despite your father's imprisonment, a lot of people still look to your family for leadership for even the Clans follow where the Malfoy lead; they always have and always will. Dumbledore knows this, too, and he knows the coming war is won before it's even started if he can but get the Malfoy on his side.'

Draco nodded sombrely. 'I understand,' he said and he did for Lucius had made sure his son would not forget it. It was, he had explained, the single most important thing that Draco was to remember. 'But Father would never ally himself with Dumbledore and Potter. The idea's ridiculous.'

'Oh indeed,' Malfoi replied swiftly, catching his chin in her gloved hand and forcing him to look at her. 'There's bad blood between them that has nothing to do with Him. But what about you, Draco?'

He swallowed hard, unable to meet his godmother's unblinking stare and looked away, wincing as her grip intensified to the point of becoming painful.

'Look at me!' she ordered and he obeyed reluctantly. 'What of you, Draco?' she repeated.

'What of me?' he replied, striving to sound calm.

'Dumbledore's time is nearly up,' she stated bluntly, 'If he cannot win you to his side then he will do anything he can to make sure you cannot join ours. He has no other choice. He will try and win your loyalty, Draco.'

'My loyalty lies with our Lord,' Draco recited because he that was what he knew Malfoi wanted to hear.

She cocked her head slightly to one side as he said this, a strange look in her eyes and Draco had the sudden feeling that she knew, knew, he didn't fully believe that and that any minute she'd have her wand pointed at his throat, the Killing Curse falling from her lips.

But the moment passed, the look was gone and she released him, standing abruptly and smoothing the creases from her dress. 'Do not worry, mon cher, the Lord is most eager for you to join the ranks of his faithful. He will call for you this year and your father saw fit to engineer my transfer here to make sure that that nothing gets in the way of that.'

That piece of information stunned him. 'My father?'

'That's right,' she said, smiling down at him. 'You didn't think the Governors actually thought of it themselves did you? Sometimes, Draco, your father can actually be quite clever! He'll be so proud of you that night, so proud. We both will.' And she leant down, serpent-swift to kiss the air a millimetre from his cheek and bid him good night.

Finally alone, she drew her wand from her pocket and locked the door, drawing out a folded letter from the same pocket and re-read it once more. She held the tip of her wand to one corner and whispered, 'Incendio!'

'Your move, Lucius,' she whispered, watching as the flames quickly consumed the letter, the parchment blackening and disintegrating behind them.

It must have been an hour later when the Feast ended and the rest of Slytherin exploded into the Common Room in a riot of flapping robes, school bags and Transfiguration textbooks, thrown with great accuracy and enthusiasm into the farthest corners of the room where they were promptly lost to view.

With little to do but wait, Irona had reluctantly pulled out her charms book and settled down to practice them. There had been a few...calamities which she'd had had to hurriedly repair and there was a large dark scorch mark on the floor where she'd lost control of a fire spell but otherwise she was pleased to find that she could remember much more than she'd thought she could.

She was trying to recall a complex chameleon charm when the door banged open and a bullish-looking girl stormed into the room and stood there, glowering down at her darkly. 'Who're you?' she growled.

Steeling herself, Irona closed her charms book and placed it to one side and slowly got up from the bed. With the other girl standing so close, they ended up standing almost face to face but if anything that worked to Irona's advantage but although the girl was smaller by a good few inches, she was heavy-set and square-jawed and what she lacked in stature, she made up for in sheer belligerence.

'Irona de Mordechai-Voltaire,' Irona replied coolly and if anything, the girl's expression darkened even more, the tension between them becoming even greater. Thinking quickly, Irona raised her hand – still holding her wand – and brushed a strand of hair away from her face.

It worked – the girl's eyes following the wand and then flicking back up to Irona. It did nothing to lessen her hostility but it would make her think twice before acting on it. She didn't take a step back, however, and her next question was asked into Irona's face, 'What are you doing in my room?'

Irona barely managed to suppress a flinch at the bad breath that assaulted her and replied shortly, 'Professor Snape assigned me this room.'

The girl glanced around and crossed her arms, smiled a smile that only served to show teeth and said, 'This room isn't really big enough for three of us.'

Irona would have had to be deaf to miss the challenge. Heart pounding, she straightened and tipped her head back slightly and answered mildly, 'No, I don't think it is. Now if you'll excuse me...?'

The girl didn't move and whilst that didn't come as a surprise, what Irona wasn't prepared for was the other girl starting to laugh, peals of hysterical mirth that came rumbling up from her belly, making her ample body heave and shake and exploded into Irona's face and making the latter take an involuntary step back.

And then, just as Irona thought she might snap and actually slap her, she stopped, so suddenly it seemed that someone somewhere had simply flicked a switch. But she wasn't aggressive anymore; she didn't even appear to be aware of anything around her. Her arms dropped to her sides and her hard face took on a vacant look, looking through Irona at something far beyond that only she could see, still and unresponsive as though she had been Petrified.

'Oh, fuck me,' Irona muttered as understanding dawned and made to push past her. So fast it was almost inhuman, the girl moved - her right arm flying into Irona's chest and sending her reeling backwards and onto the bed, her wand dropping to the floor. She pushed herself to her knees quickly and, seeing that the other girl was again still, cast around for her wand for the other girl was conveniently blocking her from leaving the bed and Irona had no wish to go up against her again. Flesh that should have been soft with fat had been as hard and immovable as iron and the power behind it hadn't been human. A second later and she'd found her wand. It had rolled behind the other's feet.

She looked back up and flinched as the slack face turned towards her, the blank brown eyes focussed on her own but without a sign of intelligence behind them. She swallowed hard and tensed but what the attack never came.

'You had better watch your back,' she said instead, the words out of sync with the movements of the girl's lips and mouth. Her voice, as Irona had known it would be, absolutely toneless - the words delivered in a precise monotone cadence – however, it wasn't without emotion. Without intonation or inflection, the words had been delivered with an intensity of hatred that Irona couldn't begin to comprehend.

'MILLICENT!'

Irona turned her head to the door so fast that she felt her neck crack painfully. Another girl was standing in the doorway, one who had a doll's perfect blonde ringlets, porcelain-perfect skin and a slight upturned snub nose.

'Pansy?!' Irona exclaimed and received a wink in return before her unlikely saviour turned on one heel and delivered a sharp smack to the side of Millicent's face. Irona's paralysis fled at the sharp crack as flesh met flesh and she watched, open-mouthed as Pansy shook her stinging hand and then smacked Millicent again, this time on the other side of her face.

Shock and confusion morphed quickly into horror, however, as on the wing of Pansy's third attack, the girl jerked and blinked, reeling backwards and saved from a nasty fall by the edge of the bed next to Irona's. She raised both hands to her face and the red marks already blooming on her cheeks and turned on Pansy, ignoring Irona's presence altogether.

'You bitch!' she shrieked as tears began rolling down her cheeks uncontrollably.

Pansy ignored the insult and gave her a small relieved smile that wasn't returned. 'Welcome back.'

'Fuck you!' Millicent croaked, turning on her heel to flee the room and her heavy tread sounding on the stairs as she made her way down to the Common Room.

It was several seconds before Irona had recovered enough to turn to Pansy for some sort of explanation but found herself engulfed in a rib-crushing hug instead.

'Ribs!' she managed to gasp out and Pansy released her, laughing.

'Sorry,' she said, anything but, 'the excitement got the better of me.'

Irona looked her over and shook her head silently, saying finally, 'You look...different from the last time I saw you.'

'The last time you saw me,' Pansy told her, toying with a curl, 'was five years ago. Anyway, didn't Draco tell you? He was always writing you the longest letters.'

Irona cast her mind back but came up with a blank. 'He might have said you'd done something to your hair,' she ventured.

Pansy rolled her eyes at the unimaginable stupidity of boys and dismissed Draco as quickly as she'd brought him up. 'What do you think?' she asked.

Irona was speechless. The last time she'd seen Pansy the girl had been fourteen, loud and shrill and had struck Irona as bearing the most striking resemblance to a pug. Bluntly speaking, she'd been a brat, but then so had Draco and most probably, so had Irona herself. They'd gotten along famously. Now, however, Pansy was eighteen and the changes were merely those that came with growing up. Although still diminutive, she had shed the puppy-fat Irona still possessed and her slender figure was undeniably that of woman's.

'You look amazing, Pansy,' Irona said simply and added, 'I feel the quite the Ugly Duckling next to you.'

That, however, didn't seem to be something Pansy wanted to hear. 'Oh, nonsense,' she declared in a voice that brooked no dispute. 'Now, are you coming to hear Snape's speech? The boys are waiting to meet you, anyway. Did you know Draco's been talking endlessly of your arrival for the whole summer?'

And as much as she had changed, there were just some aspects of Pansy Parkinson which were simply...unalterable and would remain so until the last day of her life. 'Pansy...'

'He really has! Wouldn't surprise me if he had actually been quite looking forward to the new term. In fact, I'd wager he was happier about your starting that he was about his godmother taking up the DADA position!'

That last was news to Irona. 'So that woman is related to him then?'

'What? De Malfoi? I would have thought her name was a little clue, wouldn't you?' She asked slyly.

Irona rolled her eyes good-naturedly and explained, 'Just because she shares his surname, Pansy – which she doesn't, really – doesn't mean she's a close relative. She's his godmother?'

'And his father's step-sister besides,' Pansy said, 'I thought he told you everything?'

Apparently not as much as I had thought, Irona mused to herself and declined to reply.

'So are you coming for the speech?' Pansy asked, changing the subject. 'I think I can already hear him.'

Irona didn't feel like listening to Snape's speech, didn't feel like doing anything really other than sleeping. Maybe when she awoke, all of this might have been a bad dream and she'd be back with Marianne, or in Wrenridge. Anywhere other than here.

Pansy gave her a puzzled look. 'Sorry?'

'Oh nothing. Just- thinking aloud.'

'First sign of madness you know.'

'I know,' she sighed, 'Yeah, I'll be down in a minute. You go ahead.'

Pansy gave her a worried look. 'Are you sure? Maybe you should have an early night; you don't look too well. I can explain to the boys.'

'I'll be down...I just need a minute.'

'Take as many as you need,' Pansy replied and turned back just as she got to the door. 'You know,' she said slowly, 'it'll be good to have another girl to talk to. It's not as though I can exactly talk to Millicent about anything and as for the boys...' she trailed off and gave Irona one last small smile before she left, leaving Irona to wonder why she hadn't accepted the exit Pansy had offered her. 'Because you'd only be delaying the inevitable,' she answered herself and climbed off the bed to retrieve her wand and stopped.

Down in the Common Room Professor Snape was giving a speech. Somewhere down there too was Draco Malfoy, who owed her some answers.

A faint sound drifted in through the open door. Too faint to make out the words, Irona could hear only the smooth, almost-lilting cadence of the Professor's voice. Even so far away, the sounds created a spell, she could feel the warmth in the voice wrapping itself around her like armour, protecting her, she knew, from the weapons of the rest of the school.

She went to the door and looked down the stairwell; the last few steps were bathed in a warm golden light – from the fire, no doubt – and she could hear Snape far more clearly now, though she was still too far away to make out more than a few words. Soundlessly, she walked down the stairs and settled herself on the penultimate. Snape was impressively backlit from the fire which he was standing in front of. Slytherin house, from the seventh years who had heard it all before down to the smallest first year were ranged in front of him in a loose semi-circle. Some were standing, others were sitting on the couches or perched on the edge of tables and though their expressions ranged from resignation to awe, all were paying the strictest attention to what their House Master had to say.

Irona scanned the crowd but though she easily found Pansy in a group of seventh years, there was no sign of Draco himself so she rested her head against the cold stone wall and let the professor's words wash over her.

'...breakfast is served in the Great Hall between the hours of seven and eight o'clock. If you are for some reason unable to make it to breakfast and your friends have neglected to save you any then you have no-one but yourselves to blame if you go hungry till lunch-' he paused as the older students laughed in appreciation. 'I trust that you all possess the necessary equipment and literature that was listed in your letters, if you don't then you will have to OWL your parents as soon as possible, however, I may be able to provide a temporary loan until then. I have your timetables here-'he held up a thick wad of parchment to a chorus of accompanying groans '-don't lose them. If you are in the habit of misplacing important documents, I suggest you become adept at Locating Charms as quickly as possible.' Here he paused again to look round the group, meeting the eyes of as many as possible and the underlying exhaustion in his voice when he continued was impossible to miss.

'My last point I need to talk to you about is rather more serious. As you should all know, Hogwarts was founded by four great wizards and witches. Each set up a separate house and for a great many years there was peace and great friendship between the Houses and their Founders, especially Gryffindor and Slytherin, although many of you might find it hard to believe. There was, however, a great ideological division between Slytherin and the other Houses and this eventually proved too great to overcome and this culminated in a duel between Slytherin and the other Founders, especially Gryffindor. As you would expect, Slytherin lost and was driven from the country, never to return. From that time on, we have been cast as the pariahs of the school, stereotyped and labelled, despised and made outcasts and with each successive generation this prejudice seems to become greater and harder to fight against.

'From the moment the Sorting Hat put you into my House, the rest of the school, the teachers included, labelled you as Wizarding scum-' here the professor's control slipped momentarily and a measure of the bitterness he felt escaped into his words '-it is entirely up to yourselves how you wish to deal with such bias and though I will always endeavour to defend my students to the best of my ability, I do not want to hear of any of you settling disputes or seeking retaliation by means of physical violence. You are Slytherins, and better than that.' And with that, he finished and the students, released from his spell shook their heads, stretched their limbs and splintered off to catch up with their friends.

Pansy and her group quickly grabbed the chairs nearest to the fire, seeing off some competition from younger students with sharp words and even sharper glares.

'Hey.'

Irona looked round and saw Draco settling himself down beside her. 'I didn't see you come in.'

She shrugged, watching Snape as the professor made his way round the room, stopping to talk to students individually as he handed them their timetables for the coming year. 'What did you think of the speech?'

Irona shut her eyes and let the lively chatter wash over her. Listening to it, she almost believed that she belonged. 'Nothing I hadn't already known. Nothing you hadn't already told me, but disheartening, all the same.'

Snape was now talking to Pansy's group by the fire. Although Snape's face was hidden from view, Irona could see Pansy's; bright and animated and her curls golden in the firelight. She was speaking quickly, illustrating her words with quick, delicate movements. She paused to let Snape reply and a moment later the group burst into laughter, even, Irona was surprised to see, Millicent.

'He's very much the father-figure isn't he,' she said, for Draco talked about Snape as often as he complained about Harry Potter but she had always thought that Snape's treatment of Draco was more to do with the fact that he was his godfather.

'Unless you over-step the line,' said Draco, frowning slightly as he recalled the times he's been unlucky enough to suffer Snape's...displeasure.

Irona grinned suddenly as she recalled what Snape had said in his speech and tried an imitation of the professor's voice, 'Curse 'em; hex 'em; poison 'em if you have to but I'll have your head if you punch 'em.'

Draco stared at her blankly for a moment and then shook his head slowly. 'Not even close, Irona, and I'd advise you against doing that again when the Professor's within earshot.'

'OK,' she said vaguely, remembering what else Snape had said. 'What if it could be done, though?' she said suddenly.

'If what could be done?'

'Change everyone's attitudes,' she explained with a wide, sweeping gesture that encompassed not only the Slytherins but the rest of the school as well, scowling at him when he scoffed at her suggestion. 'What's so funny?'

'Irona, this is your first year, you don't know what it's like here,' Draco said slowly, as though he were talking to a five year old. 'The rest of the school can do no wrong. A few points taken off here and there, a slap on the wrist and that's all. Too much has happened for the school to change.'

'Fine,' said Irona shortly, 'Forget I said anything.'

'Look, shall we go over to the fire?' Draco said, changing the subject abruptly and standing up. 'Blaise is giving us a very dirty look.'

Irona looked over towards the fireplace again and saw that Draco was quite right. A dark-haired youth was indeed giving them both a look that said he though they were being unforgivably rude. 'One last thing,' Irona said, laying a hand on Draco's shoulder to stop him as she too got up. 'You knew I was coming here before I did.'

Draco frowned and shook his head. 'I wouldn't have thought so. When did your aunt tell you?'

'Three weeks ago. When did you know?'

'Before we finished for the summer,' Draco said slowly. 'She contacted my father. What's going on?'

'I don't know but I will find out,' she promised. 'Come on, lead the way...before that boy's look gets so pointed it takes someone's eye out.'

'...and then they made me their chief,' said Irona, finishing the story with a flourish.

Severus Snape smiled to himself at the explosion of applause and placed his book down on the table in front of him.

He always liked to spend the first evening of the new term in the Common Room with his students. He'd tuck himself away in the far corner and while away the evening with work or a good book, happy enough just being there without intruding upon them. Of late, he'd been spending more and more time with them.

Tonight, however, he'd had an ulterior motive for staying and had read half his book already without taking it in. He glanced at the grandfather clock – was it really half past ten already? – and then back at the seventh years. Millicent Bulstrode had gone to bed a few minutes ago, Pansy and Blaise were absorbed in each other – little surprise there – and Draco, Crabbe and Goyle broken out the cards and were arguing heatedly over the rules of Exploding Snap.

Irona was looking a little...lost.

Having been waiting for this opportunity the whole evening, Snape pushed his chair back and made his way back over towards the fireplace. 'Miss de Mordechai-Voltaire, may I have a moment?'

Out of the corner of his eye, Snape saw Draco covertly watching them but Irona herself seemed unworried. 'Only if you promise not to call me that again,' she said, holding out her hand to be helped up. 'I don't like formality.'

Snape obliged her with a small nod and guided them over to his table. 'How else shall I call you then?' he asked her.

Over the years of her friendship with Draco, Snape had often seen the two of them together around the Manor, often no more than shadows half-glimpsed out of the corner of his eye as they chased each other from room to room or else plotted their inevitable pranks against his person. But his visits to the Manor had always been too infrequent and never to do with pleasure and consequently he hadn't even found out her name until her picture appeared two years ago in the Daily Prophet in the article that described her parents' identification as Death Eaters and subsequent incarceration.

Now that he had the chance, he was curious to find out about her and perhaps more importantly, to find out how she might figure in the years to come.

'Irona will do fine,' she said.

'Unfortunately enough, it seems that you and I don't share the same views when it comes to formalities, Miss de Mordechai-Voltaire. I do understand, however, that for someone in your position, there is no-one here, bar Mr. Malfoy, that you would class an equal, let alone a superior,' he paused letting the words sink in and watching Irona grow more and more uncomfortable as she sat, slumped in her chair and staring fixedly at the table in front of her. 'But whilst you are here, in Hogwarts and a member of my House, you will conduct yourself as befits one of your standing and you will address your Professors – each and every one of them – as 'Professor' or 'Sir'. Is that clear my lady?'

She flinched but drew a deep breath and looked up, meeting his gaze steadily if not particularly calmly. 'Inescapably... Professor,' she bit out, more willing to be condemned to the deepest circle of Hell rather than call him, a mere Snape 'sir'.

Snape sat back, satisfied enough at her answer and allowed himself a thin smile. 'That's better.' Pride hurt, and a not a little bit thrown by having been reprimanded only a few hours after joining, Irona could do little but sit there and fume silently. In a lighter tone he continued, 'You'll find that Hogwarts is a very different school to Wrenridge-'

She looked up sharply at the mention of her previous school but held her tongue, unwilling to risk any further reprimands and Snape continued as though he had noticed her reaction, '-but no less educational for all that. What you will learn, however, will depend upon how much you wish to learn.'

'Meaning exactly what, Professor?'

Snape leant forward again, lowering his voice so that there was no chance of them being overheard. 'Why did your aunt send you here Miss de Mordechai-Voltaire? Did she believe that Hogwarts could teach you anything more about magic that you didn't already know?'

She shook her head slowly, anger replaced by confusion. 'I don't understand.'

'A school, Wizarding or Muggle, is an institution that facilitates the accumulation of knowledge. Not all knowledge, however, is academic in nature. Tell me when you think you know why you're here.'

She was silent for a few moments, gaze unfocused as she turned this around in her brain. Obviously the question of her enrolment had also been puzzling her. Snape would have bet a substantial fortune that many of the turns her life had taken in the last two years had left her reeling and confused, like a ship caught in a particularly nasty squall. She was lucky then, although she didn't know it, that Snape – harsh as his methods undoubtedly sometimes were – was determined to help her regain her bearings.

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair as she snapped back to the here and now. 'Is there anything else Professor?' she said, beginning to rise.

'I heard that you met Millicent Bulstrode,' he said quietly and Irona abruptly stilled. He watched her face whiten and gestured at her to sit back down.

'Oh,' she muttered hollowly, staring at her hands where they rested in front of her, unconsciously curled into fists. 'Imperius Re-programming. Somebody tortured her until her mind broke and then turned her into some kind of sleeper agent.'

Snape masked his surprise at her reaction and filed it away for when he could talk to Dumbledore later. 'Her participation in the act wasn't wholly involuntary,' he ventured carefully, watching her carefully. Telling her this was a gamble. She might divine more from his words than he intended her to but he was willing to take it. The greatest risks often gave the greatest rewards. 'It happened last year. She was ordered to kill Professor Dumbledore. We were able to step in on time and save her and whilst we were able to bring her back, some of the damage to her mind was irreparable. Extreme vulnerability, paranoia, psychosis... Sometimes traces of the programming resurface – that's what happened when you first met her.'

'Oh god...' In her eyes Snape could almost see her thoughts. _He ruined a life... _In his own lay his answer. _Not his first, nor his last..._

'Welcome to Slytherin's House, Irona de Mordechai-Voltaire. The headmaster has asked that you meet him tomorrow morning before breakfast. There are some matters we wish to discuss with you.' He pushed back his chair and stood as Irona drifted away back towards the fireplace and sit down next to Draco. Now, however, she didn't bother to try and appear confident; staring fixedly into the fire she had retreated back into herself and appeared to Snape to be cowed by what she knew.

Snape picked up his book and tucked it into his robes, he wasn't overly worried. He knew how resilient youth was, how even those who appeared so fragile could be immensely strong. The younger you were, the easier it was to take shocks like the one Irona had just been dealt and within a very short time reset your equilibrium to accommodate whatever changes had occurred.

He took one last look at the group before slipping quietly out of the portrait hole and made his way silently through Hogwart's deserted corridors. A long night lay ahead of him.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

Albus Dumbledore watched the fidgeting teenager sitting opposite him and wondered if she realised how much trouble she'd get into if she actually did gave in to her impulses and threw that paper weight at the pacing Deputy-Headmistress.

Probably not, he decided and cast about for something to say before McGonagall suffered a nasty cut.

'Minerva.' She looked up and scowled as she caught sight of the girl. 'Could you go and find Professor Snape? We really cannot start until he's here.' He added quickly, seeing the scowl deepen the longer the Slytherin was within eyesight.

He sighed as she left and turned back to Irona. She'd stopped staring at the paper weight and was now watching him with a rather disquieting intensity. He held out a small glass jar filled to the brim with shiny yellow sweets. 'Sherbet cream?'

She hesitated slightly before shaking her head firmly. 'No thank you, Headmaster. Professor Snape said there were issues.'

'Straight down to business, eh?' he said and helped himself to a sweet. 'You remind me very much of your parents,' he added.

Irona looked down at the table with a muttered, 'Oh.'

'They had tremendous raw potential,' Dumbledore continued, 'easily two of the better students in their year.' Perhaps even the best had he recognised their potential earlier, he thought. The same could be said of so many that passed through the school. 'I was quite saddened when I heard of their arrest.'

Irona looked up sharply at that, 'What—?' she began when the door opened once again and McGonagall and Snape filed in.

'Ah! Severus, just in time. Take a seat. Now, where was I? Oh yes. Your aunt kindly included the details of your education when she enrolled you here. You were home tutored, I believe.'

Irona nodded. 'Until I was sixteen.'

Dumbledore picked up a piece of parchment off his desk and briefly re-read it. 'It says here that after— that two years ago you were sent to a Muggle school. Now that surely cannot be correct?'

'It is,' she said carefully.

'Ah,' He set the letter down and gave her small smile, really wishing that the girl would relax, 'in that case, just in time to take the set of exams they call GCEEs.'

'GCSE's, Professor,' she corrected him. 'General Certificate of Secondary Education.'

'But how could you hope to pass them without the necessary basic information?'

'The anatomy of a wizard is no different to that of a Muggle,' she pointed out. 'An algebraic equation doesn't suddenly change because it's being solved by a wizard. French is still French, no matter by whom it's spoken. Can I ask exactly what this has to do with anything?'

'We need to be sure that you are capable of passing your NEWTS,' said McGonagall swiftly. 'In order to make sure that you will be able to keep up with the rest of your year we have prepared a set of tests in each subject. We wouldn't want you to fall behind, or, Merlin-forbid, be held back a year.' She looked for all the world like she wished it were possible to expel students for not being clever enough.

Irona eyeballed the Gryffindor head of House for a long, uncomfortable minute and then turned back to Albus. 'I doubt my aunt would have sent me here if I were unable to do the work.'

'Neither do I,' said Dumbledore smoothly. 'But I would still like to have copies of the masers' reports, if you please.'

'Of course. Can I go now?' she asked, rising from her seat. Albus gestured at her to sit back down.

'There is one other question I would like to have answered… Tell me Irona, why did your aunt send you to Wrenridge? It is, after all, a Muggle school. For someone like yourself, it is an odd choice.'

'Ask my aunt, Professor,' she replied smoothly, 'and if you find out, I'd appreciate it if you would tell me.'

The headmaster smiled and nodded once towards the door. 'Very well. You will see Professor Flitwick for Charms first thing after breakfast,' said the headmaster. 'Oh and Irona? You are very welcome and it is my sincere hope that you enjoy the time you spend with us here.'

'So do I,' she replied after a moment and let the door slam shut after her.

With an audible sigh of relief, Minerva stepped forward and took the vacant seat. 'Well! This promises to be interesting.'

'Indeed.' Albus mused quietly, 'I can't help but wonder if her aunt managed to step in before it was too late.'

'You think to find an ally in the girl?' McGonagall looked from one man to the other, clearly sceptical. She turned to Snape. 'You spoke to her last night. Well? Did you find out anything?'

Snape was silent for a few moments, moving away from then to examine the contents of an old bookcase. 'You seem to think that I engaged her in a deep political or philosophical discussion, Minerva but I can assure you I did no such thing.' He turned as Minerva made to reply and cut across her smoothly to add, 'I told her about Millicent Bulstrode.'

Albus broke the silence that followed this by saying carefully, 'Was that entirely wise, Severus? We cannot have you compromised.'

'I deemed it so and it certainly bore some interesting results.' He paused, remembering back to the previous evening. 'She appeared quite genuinely sickened by the whole affair and for what it's worth, I do not believe she supports him. Indeed, considering that her family's association with him in the past has led them and the girl herself to the brink of utter ruin, I think that she may be as quietly anxious to be rid of him as we are.'

'Is she Marked, Severus?' Dumbledore asked quietly.

Snape sighed and half-shrugged. 'Who knows, Albus? When he reappeared three years ago he was weak and his supporters, although powerful men in their own right, were few and under suspicion. Where better to start rebuilding his army than with the children of his current Death Eaters?'

Minerva scoffed, 'What use has Voldemort for children?'

'I suspect exactly the same use we do,' Snape retorted without glancing in her direction. 'Albus, both I and Lucius Malfoy were Marked early in our seventh year. Irona would have been young, yes, at sixteen, but what better an opportunity than when her parents were arrested? Confused, vulnerable, angry… I think it very possible that she bears his Mark in which case, her own ideals count for very little. I am also concerned of what may happen when the Ministry finally gets around to executing her parents. The last two years have not been easy on her, Draco has told me that much, and I got the strong impression that it is denial that has got her through so far.'

'What do you mean, Severus?'

'I mean that while logically she understands what is to happen to them, in her heart she has not yet accepted it. They are her parents, after all and she loves them. The waiting makes it even harder for her.'

'False hope,' the Headmaster murmured.

'It's illogical,' Snape agreed, 'but logic has nothing to do with it and she will be hit hard when the Ministry finally executes them and then on top of all that, she will have the added burden of restoring the fortunes of her family and protecting her Clan. A burden which her aunt will not have been able to ready her for.' Snape finished, shaking his head at the thought of it all.

'Even had she the inclination to do so, she won't risk opposing the other Clans, will she, Severus?' said Dumbledore resignedly.

'She can't afford to, Headmaster. Her family are ruined and bankrupt and they have many enemies who are just waiting for the opportune moment to finally finish them off and take their place. Even her own Clan may well turn against her if they feel she is unfit to lead them and I fear that she may not even have guessed – or been told – half of what lies in store for her.'

'So you are saying that she will have no choice but to support him?' Minerva asked but the answer was quite clear to all of them.

'Indeed I fear so, Minerva.'

'And if Voldemort is using her in much the same way as the Bulstrode girl?'

'He isn't,' Snape replied with utter conviction. 'We proved last year that we are too strong here but he also knows that we can't keep Potter here indefinitely. He hopes to catch him outside the protection of Hogwarts.'

'Logical, certainly' Albus allowed. 'I do wish it were possible to return to a time when we were _just_ teachers, and children were children. Not soldiers in a war.'

Severus stood abruptly; 'Too late for regrets now,' he said, far more harshly than he had intended to. 'They are what you have made them. All of them,' he added simply and left in a swirl of black robes and bitterness.

In the awkward silence that followed Snape's departure, Minerva made her hurried excuses and soon Albus was left alone in the office. Well, alone apart from the cloaked figure who had sat unobserved in the far corner throughout the entire meeting.

'Well? What did you think of her?' he enquired, addressing the figure, who uncloaked, turned out to be none other than Alastor Moody, complete with mad eye, wooden leg, damaged nose and a scowl that carved lines so deeply into his face that he looked sculpted.

The Auror got up stiffly and folding the Invisibility cloak over his arm stumped over to the chair in front of the desk. 'The girl? Ill-mannered, arrogant,' he growled, shooting a venomous look to the door, as though Irona might still be outside listening, 'but what more can be expected from Slytherin's brats? Bad blood the lot of them.'

'Ill-mannered? Yes; arrogant, perhaps. Do remember Alastor, Marianne's teachings have made her far more mature than some others her age but she is still only eighteen and facing something you and I can hardly imagine.'

If at all possible, Moody's scowl deepened further. 'Aye, perhaps you're right Albus,' he shook his head irritably. 'Nonetheless her parents—'

'Yes, her parents,' Dumbledore repeated, 'not the girl herself. At least, not yet.' He sighed and leant back in his chair, his eyes drawn as they often were these days to a picture hanging on the far wall. It was vacant, its occupant spending day after day wandering from painting to painting.

'Perhaps,' he continued, turning back, 'it is possible that Severus is right, has always been right, and that we are responsible for Voldemort and his Death Eaters. That we are far more culpable in their crimes than we are willing to admit.'

'Voldemort is a monster—'

'But he was once a man, a boy, Alastor, no older than Harry is now…' he trailed off, the weight of the responsibility he was assuming a tangible thing, crushing the air from his lungs. With a heartfelt sigh he buried his head in his hands.

Moody stepped forward hesitantly, unsure of what had come over the Headmaster. Stress and fatigue were taking their toll on everyone but they coped, they had to and when they had stumbled, it was Albus Dumbledore who picked them up and set them back on their feet and now it was this great man himself who was stumbling and there was no one but Moody to help him back to his feet.

He stumped over and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. 'Albus. There have been Dark Lords throughout history. Every generation turns out maniacs. That's all.'

'Is it? Is that simply it? That there are some people who are merely born evil? No. No. Every year he begged, begged, to be able to stay for the summers and Armando Dippet had a soft heart, but I, I was afraid of what he could find in Hogwarts, what he would get access to. So I sent him back to that awful orphanage. Year after year, just as I send Harry back to his relatives, though he has begged me not to. Year after year.'

'Albus…'

'I am an old man, Alastor and old men make mistakes. I made a mistake when I asked Lily and James to join the Order. I made a mistake leaving them without adequate protection. I made a mistake leaving Harry with his relatives…I have failed them all.'

'Voldemort will get it, Albus. Very soon, we'll destroy him.'

'But it could all have been avoided, don't you see? All of it. So much death and terror. So many lives ruined. What of the Slytherin Purebloods Alastor?' he asked quietly.

Moody was finding it hard to keep up. 'What of them?'

'The Malfoy's? Irona's own family? I have failed them, too. Everyday I fail them. I allow the prejudices to continue; they are sidelined, ostracised, persecuted and I do nothing. I can do nothing,' he looked up at Moody, haunted and defeated and Moody saw that this was not simply a case of his friend being assailed by the doubts that plagued them all; Albus Dumbledore was not simply stumbling, he was already on his knees.

'We help the weak without thought, we guide their steps and forget that sometimes those who look confident and secure are in fact lost, scared, unsure of who or what they are and the most vulnerable of all.

'We can no longer be allowed to make excuses for our short-comings, we can no longer be allowed to hide behind 'bad blood' and House stereotypes. We have sowed Alastor, we have all of us sowed and planted and now the time has come to reap. I dare say the harvest shall be bitter and unpleasant for the truth always is. We must take responsibility and try to learn from our mistakes. And we must forgive, the Wizarding World punishes, but it does not forgive and that is crucial. We must change the world, for if we don't it never will and this cycle of hatred will continue until there are no more wizards left.

'I simply do not know how to go about it.'

Tuesday had dawned grey and miserable and didn't look as though it was going to get better. A light mist hung over the grounds and the air inside the castle was cold and damp. Harry and his roommates dressed in silence – the last vestiges of summer fled quickly at Hogwarts and Harry had hoped to get in some Quidditch practice before the weather deteriorated too much but it seemed that autumn had come early to Hogwarts and was being quickly chased away by winter.

Breakfast was a sullen affair and even Dumbledore's attempts to cheer them up failed. A third year hellraiser tried to start a food fight with the Slytherins but the bread roll had hardly left his hand when Ron – who normally encouraged such pursuits or started them himself - cuffed him sharply around the head. Across the room, Harry saw Malfoy mutter something and a girl, apple ready to be thrown, froze, flushed, and lowered her arm and spent the rest of the meal in a state of perpetual humiliation. Malfoy hadn't even looked at her once.

Now they were lined up in front of the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom for the first lesson of the year. Harry was looking forward to it, especially with Remus back teaching it was guaranteed to be fun. He wasn't so sure about the Malfoi woman. It wasn't just that she was obviously related to Malfoy, as Hermione had said, it was the woman herself. The first time he'd looked at her, he was struck by something shifty in her expression. Something cunning and ruthless and altogether unpleasant.

'Oi, Harry! Wake up mate,' Ron said, poking him painfully in the ribs. 'Here they come.'

Harry and the rest quietened down as voices approached. Talking together as they approached, one was instantly recognisable as Lupin's, the other's was lower, and the lilting French accent served only to enhance the urgency o what she was saying.

'—do not think that this is a good idea Lupin!'

'Dumbledore approved it—'

'Letting children loose with the Unforgivables—'

Malfoi quietened when she and Lupin rounded the last corner but she was clearly unhappy. 'Well? Inside then!' she ordered them sharply when she saw Harry watching her. Inside the classroom, the atmosphere was no less frosty with Malfoi staring at the floor, her arms crossed and her mouth pulled down into a grimace.

Arranging his belongings on the desk, Lupin studiously avoided looking at his colleague and Harry hoped the rest of the year wasn't going to be like this. Lupin looked up momentarily and caught his eye, giving Harry a quick smile and rolling his eyes at the glowering presence a few feet away.

'Ok, are we all ready?' he asked. There was a general affirmative murmur. 'Right. You know me but just in case some of you weren't listening at the Feast, my beautiful assistant here is Professor Lillith de Malfoi-' she gave the class a small tense smile '–who has taught this subject at Beauxbatons for twelve years.'

Lupin picked up his wand and waved it vaguely at the general direction of the board and the acronym N.E.W.T appeared at the top. Another wave and a bullet pointed list appeared underneath. The class gasped; first and foremost, capitalised and underlined, was:

THE UNFORGIVABLES – WHEN AND HOW TO USE THEM

Malfoi muttered something under her breath and turned away so that she was looking with a great deal of fixedness at the door. Lupin frowned at her before turning back to the class. 'NEWTS. They're not easy but if you're in this class then someone believes you can handle it. Now you'll hear better speeches about how important these exams are from all your teachers so I'll stop there and we'll get on with the lesson. _Yes_, Miss. Granger, you are reading that correctly. The Unforgivables.'

Hermione lowered her hand, blushing furiously but Harry knew that her question had been going through everyone's mind.

Malfoi turned back to the class at that and Harry had the distinct impression that she was looking at a point somewhere over their heads and a mile or so beyond the classroom wall.

'The Unforgivable Curses,' she began. 'Imperius, Cruciatus and Avada Kedavra. Three curses that will land you in Azkaban so fast you won't even have time for a trial. It appears you are already somewhat acquainted with them. Cast Imperius upon someone and you have instant, complete control over them. They will do anything you tell them to do. Depending on the strength of the wielder, the way the curse is applied and the strength of the victim, very few people can fight it off completely. The complete effects on the victim will be looked at later.

'Cruciatus. Sounds like crucifixion doesn't it? Or excruciating…and that is exactly what it is. Pain, but nothing like you'll have felt before. It can't be blocked, nor isolated, nor fought. Depending on whether it's being used to torture or interrogate the level of pain can be that of a dull all-over toothache or it can feel as though your head is being split open. Those experienced in such matters can often 'focus' the curse on a specific point on the body. If cast unwisely or taken to extremes, Cruciatus can cause grievous bodily or mental harm. It can even be used to kill.

'And finally, the Killing Curse. Avada Kedavra. The greatest and most terrible of the three and punishable by the Dementor's Kiss. Personally, I believe that there are worse curses to be hit with than one that kills instantly and painlessly. There are a multitude of curses and potions that will slowly boil your blood in your veins, consume your body from the inside out, rupture your internal organs and leave you to die, in agony, for days or even weeks but which are classed, albeit as illegal, under the designation 'Light' and carry a penalty of little more than a hefty fine. Compared to these, the oblivion of Avada Kedavra is a mercy. '

Harry felt sick. She spoke of the curses in a flat monotone voice, as though they were no more important than Summoning charms. The mention of Cruciatus had brought back memories of his own experience. The pain of that time was long-forgotten but Harry could still remember that in those moments, he had absolutely, completely, with every inch of his being, wished to die. Beside him, Ron's freckles were standing out on his pale skin. Somehow, this woman's detached, clinical descriptions were worse than the fake-Moody's. Hermione was watching Neville as unobtrusively as possible. He had gone paler than Ron and there was a slight far-away look in his eyes but other than that, he appeared to be ok.

Malfoi started to pace, her steps steady and measured, down one row of desks and up the next and so on. 'Despite my and Professor Snape's objections, Professor Dumbledore believes that knowledge of these curses isn't enough. Voldemort is gaining power and followers at a phenomenal rate and it is ever more likely that you will be called upon to fight him once you leave, perhaps even before so and you will be fighting for your lives; kill or be killed. It is the wish of Professor Dumbledore that Professor Lupin and I teach you how to use these curses.'

Lavender shrieked, her hands flying to her mouth, her eyes wide with fright. Malfoi ignored her. 'It is the belief of Professor Dumbledore that you are old enough and responsible enough not to use what you learn in this classroom against your fellow students-' she stopped in front of Harry and Ron; this was directed at them more than the other students. '-no matter how badly you think they deserve it!'

There was an awed silence; no one could quite believe what they were hearing. Hermione's hand rose slowly into the air. 'Um, Professor, Professor Moody showed us the curses on spiders…will we be p- practicing on- on animals?'

Malfoi shook her head slowly, a humourless smile curving her lips. 'Not entirely Miss. Granger. Even a mediocre wizard can cast the Unforgivables on an animal. For the Imperius Curse you'll be practicing on a person.'

Harry suddenly felt very, light-headed. They were going to be practicing on each other, he knew it. The light-headedness vanished abruptly to be replaced with nausea. Most of the class looked sickened.

Hermione's hand remained in the air. 'A person, Professor?'

'Oh don't look so scared. You'll be practicing on me as I have the necessary experience to be able to evaluate you all. For obvious reasons, however, you shall indeed be using animals for the Cruciatus and Avada Kedavra curses. Today, however, I don't think we'll progress farther than the theory of Imperius.'

There was a stunned silence. Everyone in the class was staring at the Malfoi in varying degrees of horror. As for the lady herself she had turned away and was talking quietly to Lupin; the latter indicated Neville with a slight movement of his head but Malfoi made a cutting motion with her hand and Lupin looked away, clearly unhappy.

'Harry, this is insane,' Hermione whispered and Harry was shaken by the fact that Hermione was scared. There was a look in her eyes he had never expected to see, even when Hagrid had introduced them to Grawp Hermione hadn't been this terrified.

'Its okay; she's done this before, Dumbledore knows what he's doing.' Even to his own ears it felt feeble but Hermione nodded in relief. She still believed Dumbledore to be infallible but the last two years had shown Harry that blind faith could be even more dangerous than Voldemort at full power. _Or maybe I've just been spending too much time around Snape._

Lavender shrieked again when Malfoi rapped her wand on the desk to get their attention. 'All right, you can stop looking so scared, we'll start with the theory.'

Lupin was moving around the room distributing a slim text to everyone. He gave Harry a wink and a smile but before Harry could return it the professor was gone. He looked down at the book. It was probably less than even a centimetre thick and when he turned it over he only just stifled a gasp. Posing on the front cover was a lurid photo of none other than a gaudily-dressed Gilderoy Lockhart. The photo waved at him and blew him a kiss and Harry hurriedly opened the book at a random page. Next to him Ron and Hermione had done the same; Ron was blushing a deep shade of red but Hermione was looking scandalised. Her hand shot into the air again so fast Harry actually didn't see it move.

'Professor Lupin, Gilderoy Lockhart isn't—'

'I know what you're thinking, Hermione, but the wizard Lockhart took this information from was a world-renowned authority on the Unforgivables, though he did have a tend to waffle, as anyone who ever heard him speak soon found out.' Lupin gave a small rueful laugh and even Malfoi had to smile, a genuine one that softened the hard lines of her face and made her look, but only for an instant, friendly and more than pretty, beautiful. Then it was gone. Lupin patted the pile of books on the table beside him in an affectionate way. 'Lockhart did us all a service with this book; he summarised and simplified the general concepts without losing anything vital information.

'Now if you could all turn to page twelve and read the introduction there.'

Harry flicked back to page twelve and started to read. For all of Lockhart's simplification and summarising, the prose ended up sounding blasé and it struck Harry as insulting – these curses had destroyed too many lives to be treated in such a way - and contained a distressing number of references to him and 'his' other books. His attention was also distracted by the small photos of Lockhart himself that adorned the top of each page; the combination of the Unforgivable curses and a photo which was making lewd invitations to him was an uneasy one. In the end, he had to cover the photo with his pencil case. He finished reading the page and realised he hadn't taken a word of it in.

_It took myself, Gilderoy Lockhart_ _over five years to track down the origins of the Imperius Curse and it was no easy task. The very earliest, most ancient written records, covered with grime and dust tell of 'power__ul spelles to commande the minde and soule'. These texts in turn refer back to even earlier Egyptian and Sumerian records, written on clay and papyrus that are now lost but are said to reveal the origins of such spells. For more information, my books 'The origins of the Dark Arts' and 'History of magic' series are particularly informative. _

_The Imperius Curse gives the wielder complete control over his victim's actions – useful for when you want to completely humiliate an enemy! – but also leaves no recollection of what they have done and over a duration on time can cause a severe deterioration of the brain's memory centre. A facet of the curse that is of particular interest is that it can also be cast by a potion. These Imperius potions are extremely complex to brew and the actual procedure is time-consuming and laborious and so not widely used. However, their advantage is that although it takes longer to establish control over the unlucky victim, that same control is much longer lasting and deep-rooted, allowing the controller to leave once he or she has instructed that person as to what they want done._

_And now onto the Cruciatus Curse. The origins of this one are similarly vague although records show that it has been in use from the time of the Romans onwards. It is a particularly nasty curse that can be used to torture and kill. The pain it creates is intense and unceasing and the agony only ends when the wielder decides to end it. Prolonged exposure again leads to mental deterioration and very quickly afterwards, death. _

_Finally, the Killing Curse. Avada Kedavra. It was discovered by the Dark Wizards Alistair Crowley in the Necronomicon. As it's name suggests, it kills its victim instantly and there is no known counter-curse or charm powerful enough to protect it. It does, however, have some interesting side effects. When cast, an 'exchange' occurs between the wielder and the victim which we will go into in greater depth later. Avada Kedavra is the only curse which carries an instant death-penalty._

The rest of the lesson passed in a blur for Harry and he took nothing in and by the dazed expressions on the faces of his classmates, he reckoned he wasn't the only one.

Malfoi cleared her throat as the class began to pack up and they quietened down immediately. 'Your homework for this lesson is to read the next two chapters and write down your own summary of the Unforgivables. Include as much – or as little – information as you wish, this is for your own use for revision, however, I shall be checking them next lesson. I then want you to make notes on the casting of these curses, focusing on the wand-work and the incantation.' She looked around the room and settled on Harry. Holding his gaze with a narrowed-eyed one of her own, she added sharply, 'Class dismissed.'

'Gross gross gross gross _gross!'_

Gross was, in Irona's most humble opinion, quite simply the understatement of the year but the presence of Professor Snape teaching only a few feet away somewhat restricted her vocabulary. At least if she didn't want to start the new school year by losing House points or getting a detention.

So now she was elbow-deep in a cauldron of brown sludge. Sludge that was _meant_ to be clear and colourless. She'd been chopping eyeballs – human eyeballs – and had turned away for a moment to gag quietly but when she'd turned back her arm had knocked against the workbench and she'd watched twelve of the revolting things roll away and plop into the cauldron one after another. She'd just stood there, horrified and speechless, staring dumbly as her Empathy Potion went from a brilliant light green colour to shit brown.

She felt her fingers brush something vaguely spherical at the bottom of the cauldron and deposited a lump of…_some_thing on the workbench beside her, stared at it for a second or two and then quickly swept it back into the cauldron, wiping the muck off her arm before it had a chance to congeal.

'Ok.'

_Right._

'Fuck.'

She craned her neck to the side to make sure Professor Snape wasn't watching. He wasn't; was too busy demoralising a first year Hufflepuff who'd had the misfortune to get a question wrong. The poor girl was trying not to cry and was hunched so low as to get away from the Professor's scathing wrath that she was in serious peril of sliding under the workbench.

Looking out, Irona felt something akin to pity for her; she'd had tutors like Snape. Vicious bastards who'd only ever gone into teaching because of the power it gave them. She glanced at the clock on the opposite wall. Fifteen minutes until the lesson ended and she had to present the potion for inspection.

_Fuck._

Think straight, she told herself and re-read her scribbled instructions. They asked for a ratio of four eyeballs to one bundle of Crimson Root stems to be added last. Twelve eyeballs had gone in. So…since the eyeballs and the Root stems had to be added in a ratio, then wasn't it possible that the numbers of each could change without causing significant damage to the potion just so long as she kept the ratio the same…

Irona looked at the clock again and felt a headache explode into existence as it now read only eleven minutes until the class finished. She glanced down at the potion and then out the door where Snape was pacing to and fro in front of the class. Back to the potion.

'Exactly how more fucked can you get anyway?' she asked it.

The clock said eight minutes. The one on the other side of the room, which didn't tell time, had a blank silver face on which black threads were forming themselves into sentences. Apparently the clock-thing was sentient and amused itself by providing a running commentary on whatever was going on in the room. When she'd come in, it had read 'bored' but now, as she watched, the threads rearranged themselves into 'HA HA'. Somehow, the laughter was worse than 'You're going to fail' could ever be.

Irona could see why the horrid contraption appealed to the sardonic teacher; some of the comments had hit far too close to home for her liking. Snape probably used it to test his sarcasm. It was probably mentally-scarred; that was why it was being so nasty to her.

And this was not the time or the place to become distracted. She whirled round to grab an extra two bundles of stems from behind her and dumped them into the potion, swearing incoherently under her breath as she stirred frantically – the muck was changing colour, just not quickly enough. Slowly, far too slowly, it lightened from brown to ultramarine and then to an ashen blue-grey colour. It wasn't clear, it certainly wasn't colourless but at least it wasn't brown and lumpy.

She had a minute left when she uncorked the crystal vial and dipped it into the cauldron. There was no time for ladling or anything like that. She jammed the lid on and held it up to the light just as the bell went, shaking it vigorously because she was pretty sure she'd seen something solid floating around in it.

There was a rustling behind her and a thin bony hand shot out and snatched the potion bottle as it slipped out of her grasp. Gracing her with a small sneer, Professor Snape stepped away from her to hold the bottle up to the light, exactly as she'd done. He shook it a bit and handed it back to her and Irona thought he looked glad that it wouldn't be him testing the thing.

'Ah Miss de Mordechai-Voltaire,' he said silkily, carefully ignoring the pleading look in his student's eyes and gestured at the bottle. 'After you.'

'Fuck you,' she muttered under her breath and tossed it back in one gulp, in much the same way as her father had taught her to drink.

It turned out to be a big mistake.

It felt as though her mouth, her throat, her lungs were on fire. Snape just watched as, eyes watering, gasping for air, his newest student made a credible attempt to cough up a lung. It was a good few minutes later before the burning sensation had abated enough to allow her to speak.

'I've failed, haven't I?' she managed to rasp but Snape just shrugged and kept his expression carefully blank.

'Not necessarily. What am I feeling?'

Irona focussed on him and closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind of her own emotions. Her eyes snapped open again a fraction of a second later. 'Amused,' she accused, as though it were a fault. 'You find this funny.'

Snape was impressed, though he didn't let her see that and made sure she wouldn't pick it up from his mind. 'Then it appears you have passed. Empathy Potions are complicated; congratulations.'

Irona was speechless. Snape paused just long enough for her relief to begin to give way to jubilation before he then crushed it.

'However,' he continued, and Irona didn't like the sneer that curled his lips. 'However, your practical technique, or rather, lack of, is abysmal. In more delicate potions, such inaccuracies would prove disastrous. In this instance you were lucky, nothing more.' He paused and then handed her a sheet of parchment, the results of the written test he'd set her. It appeared as though he'd taken the test himself; there was so much red ink that Irona could barely see her own answers. There was a circled 62 at the bottom, so faint she could hardly read it, like it felt ashamed to be there.

Irona, however, was interested in one thing only. 'Did I pass?'

'You did,' he sneered, ' barely. Two marks less and you would have joined Longbottom. As it is, you got the lowest passing mark in the entire class. However, I believe that if you apply yourself to your work, you may manage to scrape through.' He straightened his robes with quick, angry movements. 'I do not make a habit of tolerating this level of sub-standard work. You will do better than this or I will not have you in my class. Do I make myself clear?' he rasped and then brushed past her and swept out of the workroom without waiting for a reply, his passing making the parchment that she held in limp fingers rustle. It sounded like dry laughter.

Irona looked down at it, at Snape's tiny, cramped venom filling up the space she'd left and crushed it in the palm of her hand, stuffed it into the bottom of her bag, making sure to crush it even more with her textbooks. She scowled at the clock which was telling her, with polite indifference, that she was precisely nine minutes and twenty-seconds late for Divination. The clock-thing had nothing to say; it's silver face blank.

'Go on,' she seethed at it. 'Write something. _I dare you_.' The clock-thing wisely stayed blank and Irona looked around for something to do to spite the bastard before realising that he was still in the other room. But she'd be damned before she'd clean up her mess.

She stomped out of the workroom and through the classroom, walking as fast as she could without it appearing that she was in any way affected by what Snape had said. But she kept her head down so as not to have to look at the bastard where he sat at his desk at front of the classroom, marking homework.

In fact, she didn't look up until she had glared at the Snake Charmer, thrown her Potions textbook onto the bed so hard that it bounced and rebounded off the wall, stormed up the stairs, got lost because three staircases weren't where they'd been yesterday and ended up outside the Gryffindor dormitories, where she got cold-shouldered by the Fat Lady and eventually had to ask direction from a smirking first-year. Who led her a merry dance and deposited her outside the Hufflepuff Common Room.

Finally, twenty-one minutes later, a kindly Badger took pity on the Slytherin girl with tears running down her face and led to her Professor Trelawney. Who took one look at her and promptly informed her that she was going to die. Something or other to do with an axe.

'It's not bloody fair,' Ron groused that lunchtime as he flopped down into empty chair next to Hermione and stared moodily at his plate.

'What isn't?' Harry asked him, speaking through a mouthful of pot roast although it was pretty obvious what Ron was unhappy about because nearly every student had been voicing the exact same opinion. With the notable exception of Hermione.

Ron dug into his pockets and dumped a crumpled piece of parchment onto the table. Still chewing, Harry opened it up and flattened it out beside him. It was Ron's timetable.

'First day back and what do I get? Double bloody Dark Arts with that woman. Then onto double bloody Potions, with sodding Snape and the bloody Slytherins.'

Hermione and Harry traded a look. 'We had DADA and Potions this morning, too, Ron.'

'Yeah I know; was the only thing keeping me sane. But what do you have now?' he asked them both.

'Arithmancy.'

'Transfiguration. Ron, what are you getting at?'

Ron deftly decapitated a sprout of broccoli with his knife as though the sorry state he found himself in could somehow be helped by mutilating his food. 'I've got double Charms next. With the sodding Hufflepuffs.'

'That's too bad, Ron,' Hermione said as Harry choked on his food as he tried to swallow and laugh at the same time. Although he hadn't explained his actions last night, Ron had found them both this morning and apologised and if Hermione still treated them both a little coolly, at least she was speaking to them. Ron too, was back to his normal self and had said nothing to the new Slytherin all morning, seeming to have decided that the best course of action would be to pretend that she simply…didn't exist.

Ignoring Harry's pained spluttering, Ron poked at his timetable with his knife, smearing gravy over it. 'Look. Look. Wednesday. Triple Herbology.'

'So what persuaded you to pick it?'

''Cause McGonagall said I wasn't good enough to do Transfiguration and I thought it'd be easy.'

'Oh Ron,' said Hermione, with a little more sympathy. It was funny certainly, but Ron sounded so distraught and when she pulled the offending piece of parchment nearer she could clearly see why. For someone like Ron - for whom academia was a many-fanged monster with a taste for fresh Weasley – his timetable was no joke. Since he was only taking four subjects at NEWT level instead of five, McGonagall had decided to fill up his extra time with extra lessons. Ron had no less than three triple Herbology lessons a week and had to attend extra potions lessons on Thursdays and Fridays with the sixth year Gryffindors.

'She's done the same thing for Neville, too, you know,' she pointed out but Ron failed to see the comfort in it.

'Great! So now I'm as incompetent as Neville, is that what you're saying?'

She looked over at Harry for support but before Harry could say anything Dean, Seamus and Neville burst noisily into the Great Hall and hurried over to their table, creating havoc and mayhem in the simple act of sitting down and somehow managing to knock the gravy boat over and into Hermione's lap.

'Oh for the love of— SEAMUS!'

He looked across at Hermione's furious shout and grinned when he saw the source of her displeasure. 'Oh sorry, 'Mione,' he said, his apology somewhat undermined by the stupid grin on his face. He went to wipe away the mess with his napkin but Hermione batted his hand away furiously and picking up her bag stormed out of the Great Hall.

'Stupid idiot,' Dean said, slapping him lightly around the head as they watched Hermione leave and then turned back to Harry. 'Hey Harry, can you believe they're teaching us the Unforgivables?' He mimed aiming a wand at the Slytherin tables. 'POW! It's great huh?'

Harry saw Neville whiten, tense, his fingers spasm shut around his knife and fork. 'Neville?' The boy glanced up at Harry and then quickly back down at his food. With a seemingly heroic effort of will his hands uncurled and he laid the cutlery carefully back down beside his plate.

'You know,' he muttered, 'I'm not really hungry. See you later.' He stood shakily and hurried away from the table, in his haste sending a first year Ravenclaw flying.

'What's up with him?' Dean was looking between his friends for some kind of explanation. 'Did I say something wrong or what?'

Harry and Ron got up together.

'Hey! Where are you going?'

'To see Neville,' Harry said, 'Enjoy your lunch Dean.'

'He can be a right plonker at times, can't he?' Ron said angrily, shaking his head at Dean's stupidity as he and Harry hurried through the corridors towards the Gryffindor Common Room. 'Imagine saying that to Neville, of all people!'

'He wouldn't have said it if he'd known.' But Ron just scoffed at that.

They reached the Common Room a few minutes later but Neville wasn't there. Harry ran up to check their dorm rooms but he wasn't there either.

'No sign,' he told Ron.

'Ok. Harry, you stay here if he comes back. I'll be back soon,' and Ron was gone, the fat Lady slamming behind him and leaving Harry dumbfounded and angry. He stormed back up to his dorm room and pulled his trunk out from under his bed. He found what he wanted right at the bottom, tucked inside his parents photo album as it always was. The Marauder's Map.

'I solemnly swear I am up to no good,' he whispered and fine black lines started appearing, spreading over the parchment until the entire school and its population were shown. As it was lunch, there was a thick black smudge in the Great Hall; so many dots that it was impossible to see what dot represented whom. Ron's dot was moving towards the Infirmary and, as it turned out, towards Filch. Neville was nowhere to be seen.

'I told him to go outside.'

Harry leapt up, stuffing the map back into his trunk by instinct, relaxing when he saw it was Hermione. 'Sorry Hermione, you took me by surprise.'

She came in and sat down on the bed opposite him. 'He thought maybe you or Ron might come after him and he didn't want to be found, so I told him to go outside.'

Harry locked his trunk again and shoved it back. 'We were just worried about him.'

'Sometimes you just need to be left alone.' She shifted a little uncomfortably and looked down at her hands.

'At least you're in a better mood today. You completely blanked us yesterday and…I need to talk to you,' he added a little hesitantly.

Hermione coloured a little as she answered. 'I didn't blank you both, well, I did but—' She looked up '-Harry, did you stay at the Burrow this summer?'

'No,' said Harry, feeling greatly relieved that this was all that was the matter. 'Is that what was bothering you yesterday, then?'

'You really didn't stay there at all?' she asked him again and visibly relaxed when he shook his head. 'Oh, I'm so stupid!' she said, getting up to walk over by the window. 'It's just when he said he wouldn't be able to have me over I just immediately presumed the worst… I'm stupid!'

'It's not stupid. I thought the same thing,' Harry lied. He hadn't, of course but Hermione didn't have to know that. He couldn't, however, help but ask, 'Is that why you wouldn't speak to us last night?'

She coloured again; it made her look cute. 'No, it was more than that. I guess I felt a bit left out last year and then the thing with Ron… Neither of you phoned me or even wrote me a letter.'

'Now that's not fair!' Harry protested hotly, 'You know it's not easy for me—'

Hermione wasn't having any excuses. 'One sentence, Harry,' she said, raising her voice to be heard over him, 'That would have sufficed. Just to say hello and how was I doing? That's not impossible!'

'You—' Harry began and then stopped, willing himself to calm down. 'It was right, wasn't it?' he asked her, unable to mask his bitterness. 'The bloody Sorting Hat.'

She visibly deflated, shrinking in on herself. 'We really are falling apart. I would have thought that fifth year— Never mind.'

'Would have brought us together?' Harry finished for her. He had often thought the same thing. 'And then last year…'

She was silent for a long moment before saying firmly, 'And last night. I just feel like sometimes I don't know him anymore and sometimes I don't want to but I'll try harder, Harry. It's my fault as much as yours or Ron's.'

Harry was pretty sure it wasn't. The rows in their fifth year had his been his fault and the one's last year had been Ron's. Hermione had always been the one telling them both to be patient, to think things through, to calm down.

Hermione took Harry's silence on the matter as agreement. 'Now,' she said briskly, 'What about Head Boy?'

'What about it?' Harry asked, somewhat stupidly. The abrupt change of subject had somewhat confused him.

'Are you going to go for it?' Hermione explained in a tone of voice that said she thought she shouldn't have had to ask in the first place.

'Oh,' Harry muttered, looking down. That. 'I hadn't really thought about it.'

'Then you'd better start!' she scolded him, sounding worryingly like Mrs. Weasley. 'If you leave it too late—'

'OK! OK!' he interrupted her. 'I'm not running. I'm not putting my name down.'

There was a few minutes of silence as Hermione tried – and failed – to get her mind around this. 'You're not going to put your name down?'

Harry shook his head, still not daring to look up. 'No,' he repeated quietly.

'But— Why?'

'Because! I don't know, Hermione, I just don't want to,' he said, hoping Hermione would just drop it.

She wouldn't. 'But you'd be good—'

'NO!' He snapped, finally looking up at her. He hadn't expected her to look so disappointed. 'What about you?' he asked.

She stared out the window for a moment, lost in thought. 'I'm going to put my name down,' she said finally.

'No surprise there, then,' Harry teased. 'I really hope you get it,' he added.

She coloured again and Harry decided he'd have to tease her more often. 'Thanks but I don't know. I might not be the kind of person who's best at that kind of thing…Harry!' She exclaimed as Harry, who had been getting more and more red-faced with the strain of trying to keep from laughing finally collapsed into great, heaving, helpless, breathless guffaws.

'Harry…' There was a sharp tone in Hermione's voice but Harry was too far gone to realise the danger he was in. He gasped and panted, holding his aching sides and attempted to form a coherent sentence.

And failed. 'Herm— you, uh… why wouldn't— urgh…Percy!'

Hermione was glacial, eyes narrowed and lips pursed, she ignored Harry's frantic gestures for help and asked, 'What about Percy?'

'Well…P-P-Percy was a Head Boy wasn't he?' Harry answered somewhat lamely and unwisely decided to add 'Even though he was as much of a bookworm as you are,'to try and make things better.

There was as uncomfortable few moments of silence before Hermione sighed and replied, 'When in a hole Harold James Potter, it's best to stop digging.'

Harry winced at the use of his full name and changed the subject hastily and without forethought. 'Say, have you noticed ferret-boy staring at me?'

Hermione shrugged, 'Well, yes but what else do you expect him to do with you staring at him so much?'

That came as a surprise. Harry nearly fell of the bed in shock. 'What!' he yelped, 'I don't stare at him!'

With her arms folded across her chest and one eyebrow raised sceptically – and if ignored the busy hair and that she was, in fact, female - Hermione looked uncannily like Malfoy for a moment and she answered with a tart, 'Do too.'

'I can't believe you— I _so_ do not.'

'What are you?' Hermione asked with a laugh, 'American?'

To which there was only one response really. Harry made a 'W' sign with the thumbs and forefingers of both hands and mustering as much of a high-pitched twang as possible said, 'What_ever_!'

It was after five when Irona's last assessment test – Transfiguration with the Alpha Witch Bitch – finished and she was finally able to make her way back to the Slytherin dormitories, by this time too tired and dispirited to feel angry at any of the things the teachers had said to her, and some of them had been unnecessarily nasty, she was sure of it.  
The Snake Charmer squinted at her, face screwed up with the effort. 'Look up girl!' he snapped and Irona raised her head guiltily. She hadn't even realised she was looking at the floor. The portrait swung open a moment later and she clambered through, obviously too slowly though, because the portrait snapped back and caught her a glancing blow.

Great, she thought, rubbing her hip. What a bloody marvellous ending to a bloody marvellous day!

She looked around the Common Room for a familiar face, even Millicent's would be welcome despite the fact that the girl had something against her. She wanted to rant and rave about Snape and McGonagall and Trelawney but as she looked around the sea of laughing faces, she saw no-one she recognised. She did, however, see an empty armchair close to the fire and made her way around chairs, tables, school bags and people to get to it. A few looked up from what they were doing as she passed and smiled or said 'hi' but for the most part she went unnoticed and, possible just because she was already in a down mood anyway, that stung. Like hell.

Slytherin was close knit Draco had said. One big family united against the rest of the world. Well yeah, maybe that was true but everyone here had known each other since they'd started; they're friendship groups were already well established and Irona was under no illusions about what would have happened had she not known Draco.  
She dropped her schoolbag onto the floor and slumped into the chair with a sigh, almost jumping right out of her skin a moment later when a shadow fell across the fire a voice coming from right behind her left ear said softly; 'You'd better watch yourself.'

Irona reacted on instinct. In one fluid motion she was out of the chair and on her feet, her fingers uncurling from her wand when she saw that the voice hadn't belonged to Millicent Bulstrode, was in fact about as far removed from any resemblance to Millicent Bulstrode as was physically possible. He was a boy, to start with. Short and skinny with hands that were far too delicate and a frame that looked as though it wouldn't be able to withstand even the slightest of knocks. She would have labelled him an artist-type, introverted, living in a world of his own … except she didn't believe in coincidence and there was something in his manner that was profoundly unnerving.

Perhaps the fact that his eyes were bloodshot and unfocussed.

Or that he was rocking very slightly on the balls of his feet. Back and forth, back and forth. It _could_ have been caffeine, or maybe even a case of the boy having inhaled Potions fumes but while both were perfectly reasonable and _comfortingly normal_ explanations, Irona was aware that the correct explanation was something a little closer to psychosis.

'I know you; you're Draco's friend. You're Irona de Mordechai-Voltaire,' he said amiably, his mouth twitching into a smile.

Irona's fingers very slowly re-curled about her wand as she replied, 'Pleased to meet you,' and looked around the room. No-one was paying them the slightest attention or if they were, then they were doing so very discreetly. 'I don't think I met you last night…?' she said, holding out her hand. Maybe Draco had mentioned this nutcases' name in one of his letters.

The boy looked down at her out-stretched hand and held it limply in his own. 'Ellis Townsend,' he said and then in the same amiable tone of voice repeated, 'You'd better watch out.' Then he turned and walked off, meandering through the students and up the dormitory stairs. _Poor bugger who has to share with him_, Irona couldn't help musing before sitting back down to think through what had just happened.

Draco had never mentioned an Ellis Townsend to her but Irona knew the name, of course. An old if not particularly distinguished family that was now gaining notoriety for the ruthless and unscrupulous means they were employing to realise their ambitions, namely the acquisition of the power the Malfoys currently wielded in Pureblood circles. It was something of a joke to everyone else watching from the sidelines, happy to wait for when Goliath finally tired of David's novelty and decided to squash him.

The first time could have been a coincidence. But the second time? It's meaning was clear enough. The struggle between the Malfoys and the Townsends looked quite different when one found oneself being pulled into the middle of it.

She'd just made up her mind to keep her encounter with Townsend to herself for a while when she suffered her second shock of the night when a pair of arms encircled her neck and attempted to suffocate her in a friendly manner.

'Get off her Pansy.' Luckily there was no mistaking Draco's trademark drawl or the slender, blond-haired figure, dressed in a casual pair of black jeans and a crisp black shirt that dragged a chair over to her and turned it round, resting his arms on the back and asking, 'How'd it go?'

Pansy disengaged her stranglehold and settled herself beside Irona on the rug. Blaise joining her a moment later. Crabbe, Goyle and to her surprise Millicent, who gave Irona a dirty look as she passed her settled themselves around her in a similar fashion and Irona suddenly felt very self-conscious. 'Oh, pretty shit really,' she said, shrugging it off as though it were no big deal but the tension evident in her voice. 'Especially Charms. Forgot Summoning Charms so I told him about Glaciation instead. Corries, pyramidal peaks, glacial troughs, truncated spurs, ribbon lakes, hanging valleys, moraines. He looked quite interested. _Then_ I remembered the Summoning Charms.'

'You'll have done fine,' Draco reassured her before turning to Crabbe and Goyle who were asking for help with their homework. Irona turned back to watch the fire again, in no mood to join in the congenial chatter around her. They didn't notice. Blaise and Pansy were too busy being a couple to be aware of anything else going on around them and Millicent…well Millicent was glaring at the side of Irona's head as though hoping that the sheer heat of her animosity might cause Irona to spontaneously self-combust.

I'll never be a part of them, she thought. She was too close to the fire and the flames were too bright; the heavy musky scent of wood-smoke brought tears to her eyes but she wouldn't look away, wouldn't look at them—

'What the hell am I going to do about Potter?' Draco's frustrated growl ripped through her rising melancholy and Irona couldn't help it; she looked around.

'What am I going to do?' he repeated.

'Do about what?' The smoke had muddled her brain. Draco gave her a long assessing look. 'About Potter,' he told her.

'Oh, the staring,' she said. 'Um, be flattered? Oh come on!' she said at the look on Draco's face. 'It can't be that bad!'

'Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner.' Draco said, counting them off on his fingers. 'Every lesson. Quidditch practices. Quidditch games. Every time we pass in the corridor…for three months now!'

Millicent smiled a sickly girlish smile. 'Awww. Ickle Dwako's got a boyfwend!' she said, pouting at him.

'Fuck off Bulstrode-' Millicent's little girl persona vanished immediately '-I don't know what's wrong with you but your attitude leaves a lot to be desired!'

'At least I don't go round with a holier-than-thou superiority complex all the time!' she shouted, blushing terribly. Irona leaned back as far out of the way as her chair would let her. Sitting on either side, Draco and Millicent were shouting across her but neither seemed to notice. Around them, the Common Room was as loud as ever, no-one was paying them any notice whatsoever.

'—think you're better than us? That you're rich, or that you're a Malfoy? Because you're father was in Azkaban too so he couldn't have been that clever!' Millicent and Draco were on their feet now screaming at each other from a distance of a few centimetres apart. Irona looked around desperately and saw a book lying abandoned on a chair a few feet away. She stretched out to reach but Blaise got there first and handed it to her with a sly wink and a roll of his eyes.

'Don't you dare bring my father into this!' Draco warned, his voice no more than a harsh whisper.

Irona cringed and looked at the book. It's faded cover proclaimed it to be 'The Pentaglot Preceptor or Elementary Institute of the English, Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Irish Languages; Particularly Calculated for the Instruction of Such Ladies and Gentlemen as may Wish to Learn without the Help of a Master.' She read the title again a few times and then opened the book randomly at page 153.

'—at least my father isn't a coward, Millicent. At least he doesn't expect others to do his dirty work for him and then take all the credit!'

Beside her, Irona swore she heard Pansy mutter, 'This is so infantile.'

'No, he just allows everyone else to rot in Azkaban whilst he manages to snake his way put of it.'

—_language relies heavily on glide consonants and employs consecutive syllabic vowels. The vowel vocabulary is large; its size depending on the exact regional dialect but the consonant vocabulary is small, including glides, fricatives, nasals and very few stop-consonants. There are two glottal stops_—'

'—face it Millicent, even the Mudblood is prettier and cleverer than you. You're a disgrace to the name of Pureblood.'

Irona's book slipped from her suddenly-numb fingers as a stunned silence fell. For a second, even Draco looked surprised at the venom in his words. Pansy muttered, 'He's gone too far now,' and for a second it appeared as though Millicent might indeed go for her wand. Crabbe and Goyle, who had sat through the whole thing like Irona, Pansy and Blaise had, laid aside their work and got to their feet, standing just close enough to Draco to show Millicent exactly how much of a mistake such a move might prove to be but Millicent just glared at them, her whole body shaking with rage and misery and brushed past Draco to sweep out of the room and up to the girls' dormitories.

Pansy replaced her bookmark with an audible sigh. 'I'll go see how she's doing, shall I?' and followed Millicent without waiting for a reply.

Draco watched her leave and then turned to Irona. 'Sorry about that,' he apologised with a small smile Irona couldn't return.

'Happens a lot does it?' she replied weakly and got to her feet. 'I'll be back.'

'I wouldn't Irona,' he called after her adding, 'You'll just make it worse.'

'I can't just leave—' she protested but Draco cut her off again.

'_Yes_, you can,' he told her sharply before turning back to Blaise who was enthusiastically illustrating some point or other and had caught Crabbe and glancing blow to the side of the head.

'—ing attention to him. Wham, bang, thank you ma'am!' he beamed, glancing from one to the other for approval. His smile faded somewhat in the face of Draco's confusion and scepticism. 'It'd work,' he said defensively, 'I really think it would.'

'What's that, Blaise?' Irona asked, pointedly ignoring Draco as she sat back down.

'He thinks I should try staring back at Potter,' Draco replied instead as a way of challenging her to ignore him directly and which Irona was more than happy to do had Pansy not reappeared right then, settling herself in her boyfriend's arms with small sigh and a 'What's all this about?'

'I…have a cunning…plan,' Blaise told her, pausing twice to place a small kiss at the base of her neck. 'Potter has been staring at Draco, yes? Therefore Draco should stare back at him. So simple, so elegant…'

'So stupid!' Pansy added sharply, looked from Draco to Blaise and then to Irona who was watching the fire with a great deal of fixedness. 'Blaise, that's quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard you say,' she continued and then added for good measure; 'And that includes that pick-up line you used on me!'

'Thank you for your feedback, sweetheart,' he retorted, 'your comments have been duly noted.'

Shaking her head in exasperation, Pansy leant over to nudge Irona in the arm and whisper loudly, 'They're doomed.'

Irona just rolled her eyes and replied archly, 'Of course they are, they're boys.'

'True. Here, come and have a look at this.' She pulled Irona away from the fire and over to the far wall, a lot of which seemed to be a notice board for anything and everything that could be cut out and stuck on it. There were photos of various Slytherins – most often when the victim was highly drunk - with humorous captions pinned underneath. There were various notices from Snape about school rules, clubs and societies, extra lessons and the like. There was a section for lost and found, second-hand school books and jobs. And right in the middle of it all, obscuring Filch's list of forbidden objects and a rather unflattering picture of one Marcus Flint draped over the arm of Professor Snape himself, was a piece of parchment with a green and silver border and a repeating motif of crossed broomsticks. Shimmering silver lettering, full of flourishes and curlicues proudly proclaimed:

Underneath, slightly more easy to read, were the positions available and the dates of the tryouts and underneath that was a large space crammed full of signatures and the positions each had applied for.

Pansy pointed out her own signature near the bottom of the parchment. 'I applied for Chaser. They're looking for a Chaser and a reserve Keeper and Seeker,' Pansy's eyes misted over dreamily. 'I'd love to be a Seeker but I'm just not good enough.' She tuned to Irona brightly. 'But I bet you are!' As if by magic, a pink quill appeared in Pansy's and began to inch towards the list.

Irona looked from the parchment to Pansy and then to the quill which was aiming for a tiny patch of clear space at one side. She guided Pansy's hand away gently. 'I'm not bad,' she said, the lie coming easily, 'but I'm certainly not good enough to be on the, uh, Quidditch team.'

Pansy made a small mew of disappointment and made as if to put the quill away. Irona was careful not to let her relief show and had just turned away to head back to the others when Pansy changed her mind and had written Irona's name in the blink of an eye.

'Pansy!' Irona yelped but it was too late, her name was already there, her surname abbreviated to 'de M-V' because there wasn't enough space.

'What?' the other girl said, all wide-eyed innocence. 'I'm sure you're_ much_ better than you think. Now, how about we put you down as Seeker?' Making sure Irona was watching, Pansy leant in close and carefully drew a dash. Irona caught her arm before she could write anything else.

'Scrub it out,' she said furiously, 'Cross my name out now.'

Pansy shook her head, her blonde curls falling into her eyes. 'Can't,' she said airily, twirling the quill between her fingers. 'Charmed – once your name's on it, it can't be removed.' To illustrate, she passed the quill over Irona's name but the newly-drawn line faded as soon as it appeared, leaving Irona's name very much intact. 'So what's it going to be? Seeker?'

Irona though quickly; something about the fact that very few people had signed up for the Seeker position seemed to imply that it was kind of important and if that was so, then it doubtless required someone who could do more than just fly. Beater. Hell, she didn't even like the sound of that position. She eyed Pansy anew; the girl was small and light and seemed too girly to go in for something that put her in danger of breaking even a fingernail.

With the sinking feeling growing ever greater, she took the quill out of Pansy's hand and pressed its tip to the parchment, watching the ink spread for a moment before writing 'Chaser' after it in bold capital letters. She paused for a moment and then underlined it.

'You are a dead Parkinson walking,' she said in all seriousness as she handed Pansy her quill. 'I'm telling you this so that you won't be surprised when I curse you to Azkaban and back.' The try-outs were on Saturday. There really was nothing for it, she was going to have to dispose of the list.

Pansy shrugged, the quill disappearing as mysteriously as it had appeared. 'Oh don't be so silly, what's to be worried about?' she asked but Irona wasn't listening, her attention having been drawn by another piece of parchment on the board. She pulled it off and showed it to Pansy who gave it a cursory glance and then shrugged.

'Yes? It was put up at the end of last year. What about it?'

Irona didn't answer, just turned and walked briskly back to the group by the fire and shoved the piece of parchment in front of Draco's face with a loud 'Hah!'

He looked up slowly without taking the parchment and looked from Irona to Pansy as though she might be able to shed some light on his friend's strange behaviour. 'That sounded worrying,' he told Irona who gave him a Look and rustled the paper in front of his face again.

'Take. Read.'

'Care to form a coherent sentence?' He replied slyly and wasn't quite quick enough to avoid getting a sharp clip round the ear. But he took the parchment, skimmed it quickly and looked back up at Irona. 'OK, it's the Head Boy and Girl notice. And?'

'What do you mean 'And?' It's pretty bloody obvious, are you going for it?'

There was a hush broken by Blaise's quiet laugh.

Irona rounded on him. 'What's so funny?'

Blaise shook his head and spoke slowly, as though to a young child who needed the ways of the world explaining to her, 'He _can't_ go for it Irona, none of us can.' The others nodded agreement.

'Why?' she asked, 'Was something said? Did Dumbledore expressly prohibit you all from applying?'

'Of course not—' Pansy started but Irona didn't let her finish.

'So why can none of you apply?' she asked, looking at Draco who sighed and answered curtly, 'Because Dumbledore will never allow a Slytherin to be Head Boy or Girl. We're scum in their eyes Irona, when will you understand that?'

'I understand that if you won't behave in a respectful manner towards others you cannot then complain when they don't treat you with respect,' she bit back.

It had been a foolish thing to say, born of frustration but words cannot be unsaid no matter how much one would like and she would have to take the consequences. The group had stilled, every head turned in Draco's direction to which it had been primarily directed. He was sitting very upright, a flush rising to his cheeks and his eyes hard as diamonds as they bore into her. Into the utter silence of the group he spoke, his voice brittle with the strain of keeping his temper in check. _'Excuse me?'_

There was no going back. What she had said could not be unsaid, the words could not be taken back and there were too many witnesses here for her to Obliviate them all. Indeed, the only thing she could do was plunge onwards and she did so, but in a far more moderate tone of voice. 'Draco, I will not apologise for saying that as it is the plain truth,' She flinched slightly as the colour in his cheeks faded. She knew the signs of Draco's anger and knew he was approaching dangerous so carried on quickly, 'you bullied and persecuted the other students, you terrorised them Draco! The Inquisitorial Squad ring a bell? You have lied and cheated and you expect them to treat you fairly when you have never shown them the same courtesy?'

'Slytherins have been bullied and persecuted for decades Irona,' Draco sneered. 'They judged me by my name, they judged us all the minute we were sorted into Slytherin. We didn't start this.'

Irona laughed, a sharp low sound of contempt more than amusement, all thoughts of moderation and conciliation forgotten. 'That's your excuse! They started it? Fine but acting superior to all and sundry hardly helped to end it.'

'Slytherins do not act superior to others Irona,' Draco replied simply, matter-of-factly, 'we are superior.' His eyes narrowed and his voice dropped dangerously as he added, ' Or maybe you believe that your pure blood is worth that of those whose blood is tainted by filth?'

'You want to be very careful Malfoy, that way of thinking will make you and yours extinct very quickly. Attitudes are changing, this is no longer the world our parents grew up in and we need to accept that. I do not think my blood is worthless but in this current social climate, to say so is to invite destruction. It's called pragmatism, and we would do well to learn it.'

They were locked in a battle of wills and the tension was think in the air between them - neither willing to lose face by backing down or looking away. It was Pansy who unexpectedly diffused the situation by saying quietly, 'I would say it's six of one Irona, and half a dozen of the other. Yes, we acted badly, but in many cases it was retaliatory. But you're right, we never did much to change their opinions of us.'

Irona looked down at her, sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring down with a great deal of fixedness at her fingers where they were playing with the hem of her robe and her anger faded quickly. There was a lot that could be said of Pansy Parkinson that was not exactly flattering; her vanity was somewhat legendary among Hogwarts and her self-centredness and her superior attitude and sometimes cruelty to those she deemed of lesser status were likewise well-known but in four years she had changed, grown up and Draco had too.

'Children are beastly creatures,' Irona remarked gently and Pansy looked up quickly and flashed her a tentative smile as Draco added, 'They are rather, aren't they?'

They had been children, indoctrinated from birth with their parents' values and attitudes. Now they were older and the events of the outside world - events that hitherto had had little impact on their lives – were now pushing them towards a choice that was not to be taken lightly.

'But it's too late to change their attitudes now,' Blaise spoke up, his face carefully blank and his voice toneless; his thoughts on the matter carefully hidden. 'This is our last year.'

'Aye, so it is,' Irona greed and then jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the rest of the students behind her. 'But it's not for them. We're Seventh years; they look up to us. We start acting differently now, they'll follow our example.' She pointed at the forgotten notice where it lay by Draco. 'And we start with that and show the rest of the school a different side to Slytherin.'

'Do you think we should organise a bake sale too?' Blaise joked.

'Ooh, hadn't thought of that…' She looked at Draco, they all looked at Draco who was staring at the notice and Irona realised for the first time how much power he wielded in the House. People took their cue about how to behave from him; what he said they repeated. She suddenly understood the Snake Charmer's rant. Draco was a Malfoy and as such that made him a leader whether he wanted to be one or not and although he'd done a fairly pitiful job so far, this was his chance. _Be the leader we need Draco, _she thought desperately.

Around them the Common Room was still noisy, although she knew that every word that had been said had been heard and remembered and that they were being watched out of the corners of dozens of pairs of eyes. Such was Slytherin politics and there was nothing else to be done except to accept it.

Draco sighed and finally looked at her, nodded slowly. 'Alright. I'll put my name down in the morning but don't get your hopes up, Dumbledore won't pick a Slytherin.'

'We'll see,' she replied, unable to keep herself from smiling brightly. 'Oh and I want to take a walk, get a drink before bed. I'll put your name down now, just so you don't forget tomorrow.'

Draco accepted this with remarkable good grace although Irona wagered that he'd cast a Silencing Charm around his bed tonight and yell himself hoarse cursing her to the deepest depths of Azkaban.

She stepped out of the Portrait hole and breathed in the cool air of the dungeons; the Common room, while nice, was rather too stuffy and warm for her liking and made her way through the corridors and up the stairs to the main Hall. It was deserted and barely lit with a few torches placed around the walls and enchanted never to go out. She pulled her robes closer about herself and looked around.

In the gloom it took a few minutes for her to register that it wasn't as deserted as she had first thought. In the shadows next to the Great Hall and just as the headmaster had said it would be, a small table had been set up and a small figure was bent over it, no doubt writing their name carefully into the book that lay on the table.

Moving quietly, Irona walked over and stopped a few feet away, close enough to see that the person was female and had laid their quill aside and was now flicking through the book, the rustle of pages as she turned them loud in the silence.

'Scoping out the competition, Granger?'

Irona hadn't meant to startle her as much as she did. Hermione jumped and whirled around, fumbling in her robes for her wand and relaxing only slightly when she saw who it was. 'Oh it's just you Irona,' she said, a hand to her chest. 'Um, no I'm not scoping. No. Not at all. That'd be…well, unscrupulous.'

Irona laughed and closed the distance between them, turned the pages as Hermione had been doing and read down the list although the names meant nothing to her. 'Relax Granger, everyone else'll be doing the same thing.'

'What are you doing here?'

Irona tapped the book with her finger, 'Same reason you are.'

Hermione couldn't contain her surprise and blurted out, 'You're not running for Head Girl are you?'

'No, Head Boy actually. I meant I'm here to put someone else's name down. Could I borrow your quill? Thanks.' She turned the page and carefully printed Draco Malfoy in the space above Hermione's name and that of another boy.

'He's not really going for it is he?' Hermione asked, curiosity out-weighing indignation. 'I'd be surprised if a Slytherin—'

'Was allowed to be Head Boy?' Irona finished smoothly. 'Yes, so I've heard. But maybe he'd be better than you think.'

Hermione snorted. 'He's a bully and prejudiced snob, how could he make a good Head Boy?'

'He's not the only prejudiced student here Granger,' Irona pointed out, 'we both know that and prejudice blinds people, it makes them see only what they want to. Give him a chance and maybe you'll see that there's more to him that you thought.'

Although the gloom made it hard to see, Irona thought that Hermione remained looking unconvinced although her small 'hmph' could have been agreement. To be fair, however, it could also have been the girl clearing her throat.

'Now, what way are the Kitchens? It's all been a bit overwhelming today and I need tea. Everything always looks better through a haze of caffeine.'

'There's far less caffeine in tea than in coffee you know,' Hermione said, slipping unconsciously into the tone of voice she usually reserved for Ron and Neville.

'I know,' said Irona, 'and as much as I would love a double espresso right now, it'd have me bouncing off the walls all night so tea shall have to suffice.'


	3. Chapter 3

Thursday passed uneventfully enough, with yet more warnings from the teachers about how the N.E.W.T.S were not to be taken lightly although the students were too busy catching up with each other to pay much heed, after all, the importance of the exams had been drilled into them from their very first day and in light of the escalating incidents happening in the outside world, it was hard to think of the exams as anything other than trivial.

'Oh no, not another one…' Hermione said the next morning, folding the Daily Prophet in half and handed it to Harry, pointing to the article that she wanted him to read although she hadn't really needed to. There had been a Death Eater attack at Beauxbatons and ten students and three teachers had been wounded.

'How Harry?' Hermione asked when she saw that he had finished reading. 'How did they do it? Beauxbatons is even more strongly fortified than Hogwarts!'

Harry didn't answer straight away; his attention instead drawn to the teacher's table where only Snape, Lupin and de Malfoi were sitting. Lupin and Snape were engaged in a heated discussion, the Potion's Master waving a copy of the Prophet to emphasise whatever point he was making. De Malfoi, however, was having none of it; when either of the two teachers tried to pull her into their argument she just shook her head and went back to her breakfast. Her apparent nonchalance shocked Harry; her school had just been attacked and three of her colleagues, perhaps even friends seriously injured!

Hermione followed his gaze and frowned. 'Harry? You can't honestly think—'

'Why not?' He replied quietly, watching as de Malfoi sat back and surveyed the Great Hall languidly. She met Harry's stare with a small smile and a wink and looked away. 'Why not?' Harry repeated, turning back to Hermione. He lowered his voice so that there was no possibility of anyone hearing them and continued, 'Like you said, Beauxbatons is heavily fortified, the only way you could get in would be to know the wards used.'

Hermione paled at Harry's words. 'You- you think someone on the _inside_…?'

Harry glanced over at the teacher's table again but now de Malfoi was gone. The argument between Lupin and Snape seemed more heated than before. 'Or someone who would have been there long enough to _know_—' He stopped abruptly as Hermione glanced over his shoulder and flinched.

A voice coming from just behind him said, 'Know…_what_, Mr Potter?'

Harry turned and saw de Malfoi standing there, a bland expression of curiosity on her face that did nothing to disguise the animosity he saw in her eyes. Behind her, Harry saw the rest of the students turning round to watch them. At the far side of the Hall, Blaise Zabini tapped Draco and Irona very lightly on the arm, and nodded his head in the direction of the Gryffindor tables.

'I'll ask you again Mr Potter,' she repeated, louder so that the rest of the students could hear them.

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Hermione trying to convey something to him without attracting de Malfoi's attention. He guessed she would want him to play it safe, make up a lame excuse about Merlin-knew what and hope that it would be left at that but Harry had a different idea. Raising his voice so that it would carry to the furthest Slytherin table, he said, 'I was just wondering, _Professor_, how the Death Eaters had managed to attack _your school_.' Harry noted with some satisfaction how her eyes narrowed at the emphasis he placed on 'your school'.

'Oh really?' she said, a steely note creeping into her voice. 'And did you come up with any ideas?'

Harry matched her stare for stare, challenging her with his next words. 'I did actually. Beauxbatons is well protected but wards are useless if the enemy knows the counter-spells.'

Any semblance of warmth or friendliness was gone now. Her face was hard and pinched, her voice cold and infinitely crueller than Snape's as she bit out, 'How very logical.'

'Yeah. All you'd need would be someone who'd been at the school long enough to know what wards are used, an insider.'

The Great Hall was quiet as the students waited for de Malfoi's response. Up at the teacher's table, even Snape and Lupin were watching the pair intently. 'One thing you are forgetting, Monsieur Potter,' de Malfoi said, slipping into French as she regained her composure, 'is that there are more people with knowledge of the wards than you would imagine but I have little doubt that the…insider…will be caught. Remember this boy; you're reputation precedes you and I will be watching you. I will not tolerate your unique brand of disruption in my classes.'

'They're not your classes,' Harry retorted hotly, 'they're Professor Lupin's, you're just an assistant!' Opposite him, Hermione gasped and hurriedly looked away.

Before she could reply however, another, far more welcome voice called out, 'Professor de Malfoi!' The students as one turned to see the Headmaster and Professor McGonagall standing by the teacher's table, a large book held in the crook of the Headmaster's arm.

De Malfoi turned away from Harry, instantly amiable once more. 'Yes Headmaster?' she asked with an appalling innocence.

'Is anything the matter Professor?'

'Oh _no_ Headmaster, not at all.' Harry looked at Dumbledore and wondered whether he was aware of the real person that lay beneath de Malfoi's agreeable outward appearance. 'Is everything decided then?' she asked, walking back towards the teacher's table and the silence in Great Hall was broken suddenly as the students remembered that it was Friday, the day the new Head Boy and Girl were announced.

'Oh Merlin, Harry! What were you thinking?' Hermione choked out, grabbing Harry's arm painfully. 'Why did you provoke her like that?'

Harry watched her make her way back to her seat by Snape before replying, 'Because there's something wrong about her Hermione and I want to know what it is.'

'Dumbledore wouldn't—' she started but was interrupted by the Headmaster calling for quiet. Harry tuned him out. He wasn't so sure that Dumbledore wouldn't; in fact, every DADA teacher he'd appointed with the exception of Remus Lupin had been either evil or ineffectual, so why was de Malfoi any different, even if her name and obvious relationship to the Malfoys were to be discounted? No, Harry had no doubt that Dumbledore _would_, although he could only speculate as to _why_.

'—are positions of substantial responsibility and respect. The Head Boy and Girl must be able to lead and the students in times of crisis, they must be able to inspire and motivate. They must be representative of the school and have only the school's best interests at heart. Professor McGonagall and I spent a long time deciding whom among those of you who put yourselves forward were the best candidates – I can tell you that it wasn't an easy decision to make but I feel that we have chosen for the best.'

_For the best_…those three words made Harry suddenly uncomfortable. He looked over at Hermione who was biting at her lip and laid a hand on her arm, squeezing it a little.

'The students we have chosen to be Head Boy and Head Girl this year are…' Dumbledore paused for a moment, smiling around at the assembled students, 'Hermione Granger and Harry Potter!

No-one cheered. There was silence; complete and utter, so that Harry thought he could hear muscles moving as the students turned once again to look at them. There was silence; shocked and maybe a little resigned and then all hell broke loose as the Slytherins, well accustomed to being slighted by their Headmaster stood up and wordlessly walked out. One or two threw Harry or the Headmaster a spiteful look but most simply walked out. Harry's attention was drawn to Snape who stood up from the table and, lines of tension carved into his face, followed his students out of the Great Hall.

Beside him, Hermione had her hand to her mouth, wide-eyed and anxious. 'He's gone too far now, Harry. What do you think he's going to do?'

Harry had no answer. In truth, he had no idea.

Albus was sitting calmly behind his desk waiting for him when Severus entered, slamming the heavy door behind him.

'Ah Severus, please, have a seat,' he said, indicating the chair opposite him. 'I had a feeling you'd come.'

Snape was paler than normal, his dark eyes standing out starkly against his skin, all semblance of composure swept away by the rising tide of anger. 'No thank you Headmaster, I'd prefer to stand.'

Dumbledore watched him intently for a second and then sighed. 'Very well,' he said quietly, 'say what you have come to say.'

'What were you _thinking_?' It came out as a shout although Snape hadn't intended it to. He was angry, yes, but he knew that shouting would not help matters any. In a fractionally more moderate vice he continued, 'Do you have any idea what you've done?'

'Is it really your place to question me Severus?'

Snape ignored the implicit warning in the headmaster's words and plunged on, 'Yes, _Albus_, where my students are concerned, it _is_ my place and as it appears that I am the only teacher in this school in full possession of fully-functioning eyes, I feel it is my duty to inform you that this time you have _gone too far!_' His voice rose to a shout again and a memory struck him suddenly.

He was seventeen and stood where he was now, shouting at Dumbledore that James Potter and his pathetic friends who were stood smirking not two feet away had tried to kill him and the Headmaster was just sitting there, hands clasped on the table in front of him, listening to Snape and _doing nothing_. It struck him that he was wasting his breath now as he had been then but this time there was more at stake and he couldn't afford to give up.

'Did you even consider the other students Headmaster?' he continued, struggling to keep himself under control. 'No, I know for a fact that you did not, I also know for a fact that Harry Potter did not even put his name down. Am I right?'

Dumbledore sighed and Snape felt a savage satisfaction at the way the headmaster seemed to deflate. He looked down at his hands for a long moment and when he looked back up, there was a look of such resignation and sadness on his face that was horrible to behold. 'You are correct Severus. He did not put his name down,' he answered, so quietly that Snape hardly caught it.

'So why in Merlin's name did you make him Head Boy? What good has he done this school? He found the Philosopher's Stone and nearly gave Voldemort eternal life! He got Diggory killed! He's broken so many rules he would have been expelled long ago if he were at any other school!'

'Minerva and I agreed that it would be for the best and that responsibility for others' safety might calm some of his more reckless behaviour.'

Snape snorted at this in genuine amusement. 'Calm him? Albus, all Potter inherited from his mother were her green eyes, in every other respect he is, unfortunately enough, his father's son. Even Diggory's death and endangering the lives of his friends year after year hasn't put an end to his behaviour.'

'I still think it would be for the best. He is popular with the students—' The headmaster was adamant but Snape cut him off.

'But he is not reliable. You need two students who can inspire the younger pupils and who can take control of a situation but in Potter you have a reckless idiot who will leave the students behind to throw himself stupidly into any emergency that arises and most importantly whom the Slytherins have absolutely no respect for. And make no mistake, it is my Slytherins who hate you enough to gladly make a bad situation worse if you persist in this idiotic unfairness against them.'

That finally had the effect that Snape had wanted. 'Now see here Snape—'

'I've lost count over the years of the number of times Slytherin have won the House Cup just to have it taken away by an eleventh-hour addition to Gryffindor's total. Or the number of times Hooch has turned a blind eye or the number of times they've had House points deducted over _nothing_.'

'I hardly think you are one to talk about bias on the teachers' parts Severus,' Dumbledore pointed out severely but Snape was undeterred.

'I fully accept that I am biased Headmaster but that is because someone needs to be. Someone needs to be on their side. What I cannot understand is why no one else seems to see the connection between being ostracised as students here and then going and pledging loyalty to the Dark Lord.'

Dumbledore stood slowly and walked slowly to the window. Autumn seemed to have bypassed Hogwarts this year and so winter had come early. It was a dirty day outside, grey and wet and cold and echoed the general mood inside the school. 'You are wrong there Severus, you are not the only one but what can I do? I don't need to remind you of the last Slytherin Head Boy; there cannot be another.'

Snape followed him, 'Why?' he asked.

Dumbledore laughed, a sound that had nothing to do with amusement. 'Such a simple question...and so hard to answer.' He turned to face the younger man to add, 'you know why Severus, you know better than most others why not.'

'They are as courageous and loyal as any Gryffindor but no-one has ever given them a chance to show it. My Slytherins are born leaders. They are born with the knowledge that they will eventually inherit estates and Clan lordships; it's in their blood. They are also the ones with the greatest power, wealth and influence and we both know it's the Slytherin students who will decide the outcome of this war. You need to get them on your side, if you haven't lost them altogether.' It was after all, why - against all school regulations and procedures - Irona de Mordechai-Voltaire had been accepted at the school.

'A chance,' Dumbledore repeated. 'You say I have lost the Slytherins but I know I reached at least one.'

It took more strength than Dumbledore would ever know to say what Snape said next. 'No you didn't reach me, you simply gave me a choice I could not refuse - my life in return for my loyalty.'

For Severus Snape had never turned willingly from Voldemort's side, despite the hatred he felt for the creature. Along with Lucius Malfoy, he had been caught by Aurors but whilst the former had been able to convince the Ministry he had been under the Imperius curse, Snape had been sent to Azkaban pending execution and when he had been hauled into the room where the Dementors lay in wait to suck his soul from his body, Hogwarts' Headmaster had told him he would spare Snape's life in return for his returning to Voldemort a double agent. Severus Snape, just twenty-two years old, starved, exhausted and staring Death straight in face, leapt at the chance to live like a drowning man grasps at a life jacket.

Dumbledore turned to face then and Snape was suddenly struck by how terribly old the Headmaster appeared. There was a look of defeat in his blue eyes and he shuffled back over to his desk as though every step were an effort. With his back turned, he said, 'I will see what I can do.'

Snape waited for a moment but the Headmaster remained with his back to him, seemingly busy sorting the papers that littered his desk and overflowed onto the floor. 'Thank you, Headmaster,' he said and left quietly, his victory leaving a sour taste in his mouth.

What had started as a bad day got steadily worse with the Slytherin students in open – if quiet – rebellion. Even the Ravenclaw students who normally shunned anything not related to academia weren't immune from the palpable sense of tension that permeated the school. Something bad was going to happen... something worse than ever before. Slytherin had taken slights before and they always had their revenge. For them to have retaliated with a few insults and a mass desertion of lessons was markedly unusual and worrying.

By dinnertime, the atmosphere was almost unbearable. Students sat gazing at each other warily, attempting to disguise a glance over their shoulder by fixing their hair or brushing imaginary lint from the shoulders of their robes. Only the Slytherin students appeared unaffected by the atmosphere they had created, attacking the food with relish and talking quietly under their breath to each other. They made sure, however, to avoid eye contact with anyone else in the Great Hall. As far as Slytherin was concerned, no one else even existed.

At the Teacher's table, it was much the same. The teachers had been divided over the appointments and the discussions had quickly taken a nasty turn. Several teachers were noticeably absent and those that were there were eating in silence.

Albus Dumbledore looked around him and sighed. He had not meant to divide the school to an even greater degree. He stood up slowly, the sound of his chair scraping backwards catching the students and teachers' attention alike. He cleared his throat but it wasn't strictly necessary. After decades of teaching classes and delivering speeches, Dumbledore had thought that he would never be nervous in front of a crowd again but now, with every pair of eyes in the Great Hall riveted upon his person, every person there waiting on his words, he felt thirty again and introducing himself to his very first class of Transfiguration students. Although back then, his words did not have the potential to change the future, or at least to nudge it in one direction or another – although he might have liked them too.

'Ahem…Thank you. It was brought to my attention earlier today that although I appointed the positions of Head Boy and Girl with only good intentions in mind, I may, no I did make a mistake.' He paused to allow the students to quieten down and saw the older Slytherin students muttering heatedly amongst themselves. The younger ones were perhaps too young to fully grasp what was happening. 'Those two positions carry a lot of responsibility, more so now than before. We must not kid ourselves; a war is coming; a time of pain and fear and despair is not a dim possibility in the far future but a grim inevitability and it is a matter of tie before Voldemort attacks Hogwarts again. The Head Boy and Girl must be prepared to lead the students in an emergency, to marshal them, to keep them calm. In the very worse case scenario, they must organise them to fight but of course, that is the worse case scenario and their primary concern should of course be their N.E.W.T's.

In order to ease the burden and responsibility, I am introducing a new system of Deputies who I hope will also work to foster a new sprit of mutual respect and co-operation between the Houses. I'd like them to stand up: your new Deputy Head Boy and Head Girl…Draco Malfoy and Irona de Mordechai-Voltaire.'

Again, there was silence, broken only by the sound of two chairs being pushed back as the two Slytherins stood up, unsure and wary. There was silence- a long moment that became longer and longer until somewhere in the Ravenclaw tables, someone clapped. Heads turned to watch Luna Lovegood stand up and start to clap louder, then the silence ended, and the rest of the school stood up in one's and two's and joined in. A few stayed seated but the rest of the students paid them little mind, even when Ron Weasley stood up and walked out, ignoring the calls of his friends and classmates.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4:

'Hey!' Draco giggled, bouncing up in front of her and wearing - for no discernable reason – a pink tutu twinned with a black vest, black leather pants and full Gothic makeup. 'Wan' see me oo car'wheel'? His speech was somewhat impeded by the pink lollipop he kept on moving from one side of his mouth to the other. He was bouncing.

Irona took a step back and shook her head slowly. 'No, it's OK Draco. You don't need to do a cartwheel for me.'

It was no use; he closed the distance between them, still bouncing and pushed her against the castle's walls, his hands on her shoulders shaking her roughly. 'Car'wheel! Car'wheel! CAR'WHEEL—'

'Cartwheel!' she exclaimed and then coloured as the room snapped into focus showing her a bewildered Pansy holding her arms.

Pansy let go of her and stepped back and Irona noticed that she was wearing her Quidditch uniform. 'What—' she began but Irona cut in quickly.

'Nothing. Really.' She struggled upright and yawned. 'What you doing Pans?' she asked, watching the other girl as she shrugged the green and silver tunic over her head. It didn't fit.

Pansy bent over and then threw another uniform over to Irona, who failed to even make an attempt at catching it. 'Getting ready,' she replied with a scowl. 'So be quick. We're late already!'

Irona's mind latched onto the word 'late'. Her eyes widened as realisation dawned. _Oh no_… Irona swung her legs over the side of the bed and scrambled to pick up the tunic. 'We overslept. How the hell did we oversleep!' She pulled the tunic over her head, tangling herself in the folds of material in her haste. Like Pansy's it fitted about as well as sackcloth and looked just as fetching.

'Does it matter?' Pansy replied shortly. 'For Merlin's sake, hurry up!'

Irona, hopping on one leg as she struggled with her trousers, gave Pansy a dirty look and promptly fell over, cracking her shin sharply against the bed. 'This is going to a great day,' she snarled. She could almost feel the bruise under the skin. She grabbed the protective pads that Pansy tossed her way and scraped her hair back into a ponytail. Doubtless, it looked awful but Irona figured it wouldn't matter. Pansy's hair – of course – looked as though she'd just spent the last hour at the salon but then that was Pansy. If the end of the world were to occur tomorrow, Irona was certain that there would not be one blonde hair out of place on the girl's head.

'Draco's going to get sarcastic with us, isn't he?' she asked as they made their way quickly through the empty school. It was a Hogsmead weekend and a warm one and those students who remained at the school were making the most of the sunshine and watching the Quidditch try-outs.

Irona then had the rather unique pleasure of hearing Pansy Parkinson turn the air an impressive shade of blue. It was educational. Irona had never considered combining two swear words together. 'Come on,' she said, grabbing Pansy's arm, 'best to get it over with quickly.'

The nearer they got to the Slytherin team, however, the more they realised that this was not necessarily true. Draco was in one of his famed tempers, no doubt exacerbated by having an audience. Irona didn't need to hear Draco's screams of frustration to see that everything wasn't going well. Draco appeared to be trying out a reserve Keeper but the boy up hovering in front of the goal posts right now cowered every time the Quaffle came racing towards him and no amount of threats or pleas on Draco's part could change this.

'Get the fuck down here! Get down now!' Draco screamed at the hapless boy, his Charmed voice carrying effortlessly. 'What in fuck's name do you think you're playing at? This is Quidditch not fucking tennis! Just— Just get the fuck out of my sight you worthless piece of shit!'

The boy circled down slowly and walked way with his down, pushing through the jeering spectators. He passed Irona and looked up briefly to catch her eye. 'Good luck' he said quietly and walked on. She thought he was probably only a third year.

She walked forward to join Pansy at the edge of the group waiting for their turn, appearing, however, to have drawn Draco's attention and therefore wrath upon them both.

'Oh thank you for finally deigning to join us,' he sneered at them, a vein pulsing in his temple. He bent to retrieve two brooms, which had been lying on the ground and tossed them in their direction, one of them clipping a young boy on the side of the head as it fell. 'Although no doubt you'll be just as untalented and embarrassing as this bunch of fat slugs,' he finished. 'Merrowfield, you're next. Parkinson, get up there.'

The boy, Merrowfield, was short and slender with long brown hair and elfin, feminine features and although he showed a degree of skill in handling his broom, Irona wasn't too sure how he'd manage to cover all three goals. Pansy flew up a minute later to retrieve the Quaffle. She looked confident up there, tossing the Quaffle from one hand to the other. The two team Beaters were ranged in front of her and the other Chaser was hovering slightly behind her.

Draco blew a whistle and suddenly they were all in motion, too fast for Irona to keep up with what was happening. Pansy was ducking and weaving as the Beaters roared towards her, blocking her path with their bodies as a Bludger was hit into play. She was doing well, passing when it was prudent and catching the Quaffle with ease but the Beaters were all over them and neither of the Chasers was able to make any sort of headway towards where Merrowfield was waiting. Finally, Pansy saw a gap and raced for it, the Quaffle tucked securely under her arm as the Beaters caught up with her and sought to box her in. Her partner fallen far behind and the Beaters gradually pushing her off course, Pansy threw the Quaffle. It was a good throw but from too far away and Merrowfield had more than enough time to gauge its direction and intercept it.

Quidditch, Irona thought, was a lot like airborne hockey and she'd never liked or been good at hockey. It was the tendency the other girls had had of sending the hard little balls across the court at head height that had put her off. The damn things _hurt_.

'Merrowfield, stay up there,' Draco called up. 'Good try Parkinson. De Mord— _Irona_, take her place.'

_Oh God…_

She put the broom between her legs and ignored the urge to giggle. The phallic symbolism of Quidditch had always struck her as funny but it probably wasn't appropriate to have a laughing fit right now. 'Up,' she ordered and felt monumentally stupid when nothing happened and a small ripple of amusement spread through the crowd. 'Alright,' she muttered under her breath. 'I'm standing here with a stick between my legs telling it to get up so you're damn well going to get UP!' She felt the broomstick shudder beneath her hands, jerk a few times and then she was airborne and holding on with white-knuckled hands as she fought to control the ascent and keep her dinner from the previous night in her stomach.

It was easy to forget how disorienting flying could be and she was several years out of practice.

She inched the broomstick over to where Pansy was hovering waiting for her.

'Are you OK?' Pansy asked, holding the Quaffle out.

_Hands off the stick, hands off the stick… _'Of course, yes.' Pansy was waiting for her to take the red ball and she still couldn't prize her hands away from their stranglehold around the broomstick handle.

'Well you don't look very happy up here.'

_There! _She reached out tentatively for the ball and clutched it tightly to her chest. 'I'm fine!' she said desperately. 'Really! Just haven't been on a broomstick in a while.'

Pansy patted her on the arm, nearly making Irona fall off and said, 'Oh I'm sure you'll get back into the swing of it when you start.' Irona watched her fly away and then wished she hadn't because in doing so she'd inadvertently looked down and she could have sworn the damn thing _wobbled. _

How old were these things anyway?

_Stop being stupid_, she thought. Every broom was warded to prevent people falling off weren't they?

_Yeah but accidents still happen_, a treacherous little voice replied.

The whistle blew. Irona promised herself if she got out of this alive, Draco would be eating that damn thing. The Beaters sprang towards her and instinct took over. She dived and ducked as the Bludger whirred past her ear, to her left she saw her partner and threw the Quaffle to him as best she could. It was a bad throw and he had to lean forward to catch it but he did. Below her, she could hear Draco screaming instructions or insults but she paid him no mind. She saw the Beaters coming up on the other Chaser in the same way they had on Pansy and pulled the broomstick into a sharp left turn, fought down and overwhelming urge to be sick and from a curse behind her figured she might have hit one of the Beaters in the face with her bristles.

Merrowfield was not far ahead, she could see him moving from side to side to cover each goal. 'They're too close,' the Chaser shouted and pulled ahead of her. She had no idea what he was doing until he suddenly dropped from view, the Quaffle arcing over his head and towards her as he dropped away beneath her.

She panicked.

It was an expert throw. The Quaffle arced neatly towards her, all she had to do was reach up and let it fall into her hands…she fumbled it and suddenly it was falling. She reached out and down and curled one hand around it as the broomstick gave an alarming lurch.

She steadied the broomstick, trembling, the Quaffle clutched to her breast like a child. Merrowfield was in front of her, the Beaters either side of her and if she didn't throw the damn thing now she'd fly right through the goal with it.

Merrowfield could have taken it from her hands for all the ease that he caught it and Irona rather wished he had. She'd looked down again and realised just how high up they were.

Too high, to be precise.

The whistle blew again, piercing and angry and Irona rethought her idea of making Draco eat it. There were, after all, better, more painful places it could be shoved.

'What was that!' he screamed. Irona thought it was damn good effort all things considered and would have told him so had that not required looking at the ground again. 'You're meant to pass to your partner, not just throw it in their general direction and hope they catch it!' He went on but she was suddenly distracted. The crowd - which had been alternately cheering and booing when she had made a mistake and when she hadn't respectively – had gone quiet and were making way for a small group of people to get to the Slytherins.

There was six of them. Far too many for them to be teachers Irona thought, although teachers did have a tendency to hunt in packs. The mystery was solved when Draco turned his attention to them and swore, loudly.

'Potter!' he sneered and Irona could just imagine the look on his face as he said the Gryffindor's hated name. 'What are _you _doing here?'

Unfortunately Irona couldn't hear Harry Potter's retort. She would have descended but she knew Potter brought out the worst in Draco and in he was in a foul enough temper as it was and she didn't fancy being hexed.

'A friendly?' Draco asked, caught between contempt and bemusement. 'Alright Potter, you're on.'

A friendly? As in a football match? Irona didn't like how that sounded and from the looks being exchanged between the other players neither did they. A moment later the Gryffindor team, decked out in red and gold and with Harry Potter at its head rose into view around them. Draco rose up a little away, another Chaser and Beater with him to complete the Slytherin team.

'Take your positions,' he ordered, 'first to fifty points or the Snitch wins.' The last was to Potter who nodded and sped away to take his position to watch for the tiny golden ball.

There was no whistle this time, no signal for the game to begin, or if there was Irona missed it. One second she was hovering there trying to understand what was happening, the next everything was chaos. She glimpsed the Quaffle as it was passed from one Chaser to another, Chasers wearing green robes. Her broomstick surged forward as she flew into the middle of it all. Bristles brushed her face as a Gryffindor flew cut across her in pursuit of a Bludger. She'd lost sight of the Quaffle soon after she'd glimpsed it but flying was probably safer then staying still and waiting to be hit by a Bludger. At least the other players swerved out of her way as much as she attempted to do the same.

A Bludger came screaming towards her from out of nowhere and missed her by an inch. She hadn't even seen it. To her right a Slytherin Chaser yelled as it collided with his side.

'Merlin's teeth Irona! You're meant to block it!' Draco yelled, appearing at her side in much the same way the Bludger had.

'With what?' she yelled back, 'my head!' However, Draco was gone, diving down, down towards the ground where something small and gold glinted tantalisingly. She had no idea what the score was, if either side had scored, even but over there, across the field, she saw something red and spherical, surrounded by green robes, and went racing towards it.

She only knew what happened later but suddenly everyone was stopping and looking down and there was Draco on his back on the ground, his broomstick laying a little way away and Harry Potter standing over him, the small golden something clutched in his fist.

'What's going on,' she asked a Gryffindor who looked at her a little strangely and then replied that she'd better get down there. Which Irona was more than happy to do.

Disembarking the broomstick wasn't as embarrassing as she had feared it could be but walking was challenging at first. Her legs felt like jelly and she looked like she was drunk. She pushed her way through the crowd around the two Seekers to find Draco being helped up by one of the Beaters and cradling his right arm against his body. He looked paler than normal too. When he spoke it was through gritted teeth.

'Merrowfield,' he said, ignoring the people around him. 'I want you as Reserve Keeper. Blucas, Chaser. Irona, I want you as Reserve Seeker. Best of a bad lot, all of you and I just have to hope I won't have to use you.'

The crowd dispersed now that everything was over and Draco with the aid of the Beater made his way off the pitch and most probably towards the Infirmary.

'Hey,' Pansy said, coming up to her with a smile. 'Reserve Seeker, congratulations.'

'Er…cheers. I think.' Irona had a bad feeling about Draco's arm and the way that he had winced with every step suggested that it was broken. 'Are you going to check on Draco?' she asked.

Pansy shrugged. 'I might, I want to go back and change out of these first,' she said indicating her Quidditch robes.

'Oh, that's a good idea.'

'I'm afraid it's broken Mister Malfoy,' Madam Pomfrey said, 'quite a nasty break too.'

'I gathered that,' Draco replied, 'when you touched it.' I had hurt like nothing else Draco had ever felt. It had burned, and stabbed and made his eyes water; it had _had_ to have been broken. 'How long do you think it'll take to heal?'

'A few days,' Madam Pomfrey replied, mixing up a foul-smelling paste into a bowl and bringing it to his side. 'Now, this will help ease the pain while it sets,' she said and scooping out a thick glob, spread it liberally over his arm with the back of the spoon.

'That smells revolting! Why can't you just spell-fix it?' He was aware that he sounded petulant but the smell and the pain were combining to make him feel rather sick.

'A break like this is better left to heal itself naturally for a bit before magic can be used. In a few days I'll finish the healing process.' She put the bowl aside and pulled out her wand, 'Until then we need to keep your arm out of harm's way.' With a flick of her wand a cast and sling appeared around Draco's arm. 'Your arm needs to be kept at that angle at all times Mister Malfoy,' the nurse instructed brusquely. 'If you interfere with the cast or the sling you'll damage its healing. Oh and I'm afraid you won't be able to play in the first Quidditch match either.'

'What!' Draco whirled around, disbelieving and wincing at the pain the movement elicited. 'But that's two weeks away! You said it'll be healed by then!'

'I won't have you risk injuring it again so short a time after its healed.'

'But—'

'NO, Mister Malfoy. Now, good day and remember to sleep on your back.'

Madam Pomfrey's words echoed around his brain as he made his way out of the Infirmary and towards the Slytherin Dungeons.

No Quidditch!

It was incomprehensible that Slytherin could have lost its Seeker and its Captain to a simple broken arm! Pomfrey had said that it would be fully healed in a few days; there was no reason for him not to play in the first game, no reason at all.

Draco managed to stop the words 'It's not fair' before they made themselves known. No, it wasn't fair but unless pleading to Professor Snape to interject on his behalf managed to change the nurse's mind, Draco had more important things to be attending to.

Like turning Irona into a half-decent seeker in a little under two weeks. His mind balked at the idea; unless the person in question was Harry Potter and had a natural affinity for Quidditch then, it took years to develop the skills and discipline necessary. He had – he counted quickly – twelve or thirteen days.

The issue of captaincy was easier to resolve. To all intents and purposes, he would remain as Slytherin's captain with Blaise Zabini standing in for the one match that he'd be forced to miss. Forced to stand on the sidelines for—

'Erm…Malfoy?'

Draco looked up to find Harry Potter standing in front of him and looking acutely uncomfortable. Draco looked around for a moment to see whether Potter's two minions were there as well but both the Weasel and Granger were absent. Potter had descended into the heart of the Slytherin dungeons without backup; no wonder he looked uncomfortable.

Draco wasn't about to make anything easier on him. He leant against the dungeon wall and fixed Potter with a cool look. 'What do _you_ want?' He said, putting as much venom into it as he could, despite the sling and cast. It wasn't hard; the first match this year was Slytherin vs. Gryffindor. Thanks to Pomfrey, and Potter, Draco had lost his last chance to put The-Boy-Who-Lived firmly back in his place. He wasn't about to tell Potter this little fact, however.

Potter ran a hand through his hair, messing it even more and making a few clumps of it stand on end as he um'd and ah'd. Draco grimaced. Potter's trademark 'messy' look was unsophisticated and unpractical and, yes, messy but it did have all the girls throwing themselves at him…and gave Draco a one-in-a-million opportunity.

'Stop playing with your hair Potter,' he drawled. 'I'm afraid it only works on girls. I just think you look stupid.'

Potter _blushed_. His cheeks reddened and he looked at the floor, suddenly unable to meet Draco's even gaze. Draco cheered silently. Draco 1, Potter 0. The day, which had started badly enough and then got steadily worse, suddenly brightened, just a little.

'How's your arm?' Potter blurted, still looking at the floor.

Draco sighed and decided to invade Potter's personal space. 'My arm's in a cast Potter. It's broken.' He took a few steps forward and watched as Potter obligingly stepped back.

'Oh.' Another two steps back.

This was too easy. The Snake Charmer was immediately behind Potter. 'As _touching_ as your concern for my arm is, Potter and as _scintillating_ as your conversational skills are, I have things I'd much rather be doing right now.'

Draco hadn't thought it was possible for someone to be embarrassed and angry at the same time but Potter managed it by going an interesting shade of red and spluttering a lot. 'Now look here Malfoy,' he spluttered, 'why have you been staring at me lately?'

For a very long time afterwards, Draco would torment himself late at night thinking of this moment and of how he should have answered that question. As it was, he was feeling smug at his verbal trouncing of Potter and wanted to find out if the boy could go a deeper shade of red without bursting something so he said, with a completely straight face and without thinking of the consequences, 'Because I'm truly, madly, _deeply_ in love with you Potter.'

There was a pause, a terrible silence as they looked at each other. Potter's eyes widened – they really were an enchanting shade of green, Slytherin green, Draco noted absently – and his lips began to move but no sound came out. Draco closed his eyes as his brain registered what his ears had just heard himself say and leant his head against the wall, willing the stone floor to suddenly slide open and swallow him. What in Merlin's name had he done?

He opened his eyes and Potter was gone without him even knowing it and he was left alone, or nearly alone. He raised his eyes to see the Snake Charmer peering at him, contempt glittering in his black eyes and a sad expression on his face as the Portrait opened. 'Slytherin's doomed,' he said, shaking his head but Draco just told him to shut up as he climbed through to the Common Room.

It was empty - everyone else was either outside soaking up the last of the summer sun or else were in Hogsmeade – or nearly empty. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw Pansy curled up in one of the fireside chairs, one of her textbooks sitting unopened in her lap.

'Hello Draco,' she said looking up with a small smile. 'I was going to come see you. How's the arm?'

'Broken. Look Pansy, can I ask you something?'

'Sure.'

Draco hesitated. There were things he could and couldn't tell Pansy, just as there were things he could and couldn't tell Blaise Zabini and he was what Draco would term his 'best friend'. It wasn't that he didn't trust Pansy, or Blaise for that matter, but something could hurt them, or even get them killed. This, however, wasn't one of those thongs, it was just bloody embarrassing.

Pansy had laid her book aside and come over to him. She laid a hand on his arm, 'What's wrong Draco? Has something bad happened?'

Draco took a deep breath, 'I might have just told Potter I'm madly in love with him.'

If the physical changes weren't enough, another indication that Pansy Parkinson had changed was her reaction to what Draco had just said. A few years ago and the Common Room would have been ringing with her shrill laughter and he'd have ended up hexing her just to shut her up. Now Pansy absorbed this silently, nodding slightly. 'OK.'

'He asked me why I'd been staring at him,' Draco added, just to clarify the matter.

Now he could see the little telltale signs of amusement. The skin crinkling at the corner of her eyes and her mouth puckering as she tried not to giggle.

'It's not bloody funny!' he yelled.

Pansy managed to control herself long enough to tell Draco that if he thought about it, it actually was.

Draco was thinking about it, didn't think he'd be able to stop thinking about it anytime soon. 'I have a feeling it was the wrong thing to say,' he said finally.

Pansy made a show of stroking her chin and thinking. 'Ye-es,' she drawled, 'I think it may have been.'

'I should have denied it, shouldn't I?' Blaise was dead. Draco didn't care about making him suffer, he just wanted him dead.

Pansy sighed and made her way back to her seat, Draco following her. 'I think that might have looked even worse actually.'

'It couldn't be worse!' Draco bit out. 'He won't say anything.'

Pansy looked up at him, diagnosed a case of desperation in his set features and certain tone of voice and just decided to let him get on with it. 'Right,' she said, picking up her book again. It was a Potions textbook and a good cure for insomnia.

Draco worried at his lower lip. 'He won't,' he repeated, now far from certain. 'It's far too embarrassing.'

'Whatever you say, Draco,' Pansy muttered and flicked the book open.

Blaise was dead. Draco would kill him and then kill himself. Something simple, Avada Kedavra for Zabini perhaps but he'd have to find a different way of killing himself. It was almost impossible to overcome the natural survival instinct in order to use the Killing Curse on oneself.

'It's going to be all over the fucking school,' he muttered, putting his head in his hands. '_All_ over the fucking school.'


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5:

AN: Uploaded again due to the grammar mistakes that eluded me the first time round. I had originally written the chapter in a different tense and had changed it rather haphazardly. I'm ashamed there were so many.  
Here, Draco deals with the fall-out of his opening his delicately-shaped Malfoy mouth without thinking beforehand.  
Do a Good Deed today; review a fanfiction author's story!

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Just as Draco had feared, the news that he had professed his love for his archenemy had indeed spread all over the school in just over a day. Draco had barricaded himself in his dorm room for as much of the weekend as possible and had relied on a scowl his father would have been proud of and his reputation as a generally nasty piece of work to keep Slytherin in line.

However, outside of the Common Room, he was on his own. Yes, he might have been able to quell a few first years and yes, a particularly graphic explanation of what he'd do to their carcasses might have some effect on the Hufflepuffs but Draco didn't care about them. He didn't often allow himself the weakness of worrying about what other people thought but he knew the Gryffindors wouldn't hesitate to grasp this golden opportunity and he knew his friends were too busy doubling up in fits of laughter to aid him.

From what Pansy and Irona had been reporting, with a tactless degree of amusement, the rumours were getting more and more outrageous by the minute. Someone had said that they'd seen Malfoy drag Potter into an abandoned classroom; someone else had heard from someone else that Malfoy had been sending Potter love letters and that the singing Valentine's card in second year had been sent by him. A dozen students stepped forward, suddenly 'experts' on human psychology and proclaimed that Malfoy's antipathy towards Potter was just repressed desire and unrequited love turned sour.

Tomorrow was Monday, and after a full day of classes was the first scheduled practice for the Slytherin team.

He wanted to cancel it; he wanted to hide in an old corner of the Castle until everything blew over. Draco Malfoy, Prince of Slytherin, heir to the Clan Lordship of the Malfoy, soon-to-be Death Eater if his aunt was to be believed was here reduced to a shaking bundle of nerves, like a Mudblood awaiting execution and all because he hadn't taken time to think before he opened his mouth. If his father found out…

If the world ended tonight and tomorrow never came…

If only.

---

_Head high Malfoy_, he told himself and concentrated on not making eye contact with the other students as he walked from Arithmancy towards the sanctuary of the dungeons. For their part, the other students were equally intent on avoiding eye contact with the Slytherin. Perhaps it was his steely expression or the hard line of his mouth that told them that heckling him or smirking in his direction would be a Bad Idea.

Draco was at breaking point. Arithmancy had been the spell that broke the sorcerer's staff, as it were. Vector had come in and arbitrarily announced that the seating arrangements were not satisfactory and had promptly ordered Draco's skulking form to the front. For the next hour, he had been able to hear all of the whispers behind him but had been unable to pinpoint the perpetrators and Vector had thrown him any number of disapproving, sneering looks.

He had been prepared for all manner of sarcastic, innuendo-laden remarks from the students, but the professor's arch 'you're looking a little…dishevelled today, Mister Malfoy,' had been unexpected and with no clever come-back at hand, he'd fumbled for an answer before lapsing into silence and sinking further into his seat as the class erupted around him.

Draco walked through the halls, forcing himself to ignore the whispers that followed him like some damned Mexican Wave and the sight of his clenched fists giving more than one student second thoughts about muttering their witty remark as he went past.

The Hit list was growing. Potter and his two minions and possibly all of Gryffindor's upper years, Vector and McGonagall would join Blaise Zabini. Irona because she'd laughed when she'd heard and spent the next five minutes painting various mental images Draco did not need and did not want and even Crabbe and Goyle for questioning whether the rumours were true or not.

He was too busy with the list to notice much that was going on in front of him until he walked into Ginny Weasley just in front of the stairs leading down to the Slytherin dungeons. 'Watch where you're going will you!' he growled at her, trying to brush past and go on his way but the girl pushed him back.

'Why don't you watch where you're going Malfoy?' she retorted, 'and get some manners at the same time, or do you think your money exempts you from common courtesy?'

Draco glanced around to make sure they were alone before he answered her. 'Manners would be wasted on the likes of you, Weasley,' he told her and tried to push past her, again, just to find himself pushed back again. 'What do you want?'

'For this world to be rid of your evil forever, Malfoy, that's what I want.' The youngest Weasel smiled as she said this.

Draco had had the idea last year of seducing Virginia Weasley as a way of striking a blow to her brother and her family. It was a sound plan, and she was pretty in a plain, girl-next-door way except, there had been one little snag. Draco didn't like redheads and he hated freckles, and he couldn't bear girls that sounded common or carried themselves in an awkward manner. Draco would never fall in love with a Cockney flower girl.

'Cute,' he told her, 'now fuck off and leave me alone.'

'Not yet Malfoy,' she replied, jabbing a finger into his chest. Anger sometimes enhanced a woman's attractiveness but this wasn't the case with Ginny Weasley. Her anger stripped away her meagre beauty and left her hard-edged and ugly. 'I want you to know something,' she continued. 'I want you to know that if you _ever_ lay a finger on Harry Potter, I'll use the Killing Curse on you myself.'

'Don't you ever get tired of being Potter's tireless terrier Weasley?' he asked her. 'Following around after him, day after day, living in the hope that he'll look your way or maybe - gasp! - say a few words to you?'

'Fuck you Malfoy!' she yelled at him.

'Go lay at Potter's feet Weasley, you might get a pat on the head. Won't that be nice?' He shoved her out of the way and made his way down to the dungeons. He could hear her behind him, shouting after him but he didn't bother looking back. She was a Weasley and a Gryffindor and hexing someone from behind was underhand and cheating, a Slytherin thing to do.

He strode through the Common Room without being bothered and went up to his room to change into his Quidditch robes and grab his broomstick. Thanks to Weasley, he was going to be late for the practice session. Draco deplored tardiness, both in himself and in other people; he remembered a few incidents when he had been younger and had kept his father waiting. However, despite this, he would not be seen hurrying to the Quidditch match. He checked his reflection and made his way out onto the pitch and towards the rest of the Slytherin team. He didn't ask the Reserve Keeper to attend this session as he intended this to be more of preliminary introduction.

'Late Malfoy?' a short, stocky boy called out as he neared them.

'Maybe he's just left Potter?' another voice replied out and was swiftly silenced by Blaise. It won't save him, Draco thought. Damage done and all that.

'Right, are we all here?' he asked and received a vague chorus of replies to the affirmative.

'Aye, now _you're_ here,' the short boy said, raising his voice above the others.

Draco fixed him with a quelling glare. '_Right_. I want you to meet our new Seeker and Chaser as I am not going to be allowed to play the first match of the season. Irona and Blucas, come forward. I want you to meet the team.'

Blaise had been the Reserve Keeper last year and had been forced to take over and learn very quickly when Miles Miller had been knocked unconscious in a game against Ravenclaw. Although he would never have the talent of Bletchley or bloody Oliver Wood, his energy and tendency to throw himself in front of _anything_ coming towards the goalposts went some way in making up what he lacked.

Alouard Arnaud was tall, dark and handsome in a very French way with a lean, graceful look that hid his strength. He had joined the team in the fifth year and with Eric Marlowe - whom he affectionately termed his other half, much to the other's chagrin - made a ruthlessly effective Beater team.

Eric Marlow was Arnaud's polar opposite in appearance, short and with arms like a wrestler. He was the boy who had goaded Malfoy but he was amiability itself to Irona, talking a mile a minute in a brash Northern accent. He had a weather-beaten face, a sailor's scarred, rough hands and no idea of how strong he was. He clapped Blucas on the back and nearly the knocked the lad to the ground. Draco's expression darkened as he talked and Irona made a point of smiling and laughing with him.

However, the Chasers weren't as welcoming of the two new recruits. They struck Irona as two of the greatest shits she'd ever be unlucky to meet. These students gave Slytherin a bad name. For little over half a minute, though it felt like much longer, two pairs of eyes critically examined them both.

Finally the one on the right introduced himself as The Hawk. It could have been his real name for all of the seriousness of his tone. A mane of long, tangled, wild brown hair framed one of the oddest faces Irona had ever seen. Sharp-featured, much more so than Draco with deep-set green eyes and sharp cheekbones. His nose was hooked and pointed like Snape's and his mouth was a bloodless slash. The resemblance to a hawk is uncanny and like the animal he had taken his name from, he looked cruel, everything about him screaming 'predator'. He didn't shake her hand, or welcome them onto the team. He didn't even look at Blucas.

The other introduced himself as Red Eye, no doubt named for his one red eye; a small circle of pupil-less red. His other eye was normal - a clear, beautiful blue - but this merely served to emphasise the abnormality of the other. He had a semi-circular scar under his the red eye and a face that looked as though it would split if he smiled.

'Right,' Draco interrupted, 'let's stop wasting time and get on with the session. This is, as you no doubt realise, the last opportunity we have to beat Gryffindor. As Irona will be playing that match,' he could not help the anger that rose when he said that. He paused for a moment before continuing, 'I think it would be prudent to have her block Potter until we have a sufficient lead-'

'Malfoy?' Arnaud spoke up, cutting Draco off in mid-sentence.

'_Yes?_'

'_Draco_,' he said and behind his crafty expression, Draco could almost detect a Plan. Something ingenious, simple, and previously un-thought of, as all of Arnaud's plans were. 'Correct me if I am mistaken,' he said, 'but I do not believe that there is a rule that forbids the Seeker touching the Quaffle or the Bludgers.'

Marlowe answered him. 'Aye, it's only ever implied.'

Arnaud turned to Draco with a small smirk. 'Under your game plan Malfoy, Irona here is merely preventing Potter from getting the Snitch but that seems such a waste. Surely it would be possible for her to take momentary possession on the Quaffle.'

'The move no-one would expect,' Marlowe finished, frowning slightly as he turned the idea over in his head. 'Brilliant!'

Draco and Arnaud were facing each other and although the Beater had an inch or two on him in height, Malfoy upbringing meant that Draco could stare down a giant. 'Potter's good,' he said grudgingly. 'He could take advantage of that moment to finish the game.'

'Quite possibly, yes. Potter is _very_ good. But shadowing him move for move is not effective either, as you well know,' Arnaud retorted.

'Once it's been used they'll know to look for it,' Draco said, shaking his head. 'It can only work once.'

'Sometimes that's all you need,' Red Eye muttered.

Blaise sealed the matter. 'Draco. Nothing else you have tried has worked. Ever. So let's give it a go. Let's see if it might work. If not, we'll think of something else.'

Draco hesitated. He acknowledged that the idea had merit but… He glanced at Irona who was looking at the ground. She wasn't good enough and it was unlikely she would be, even if he took her out onto the pitch every day until the match. She looked up then and met his gaze steadily. _Say it_, her expression seemed to say.

Draco sighed. 'You're right Blaise, we'll work something out with it,' he said briskly. 'Now, get up there and warm up. Hawk and Red Eye, I want you to start practising with Blucas here, get him familiarised with your moves and techniques. You two,' he pointed to Blaise and Marlowe, 'practice blocks.' Arnaud, I want you and Irona to concentrate on Quaffle passing for now.'

The team sped into the air, whooping and cheering; showing off as they warmed up. A dive here; a roll there. Draco glanced at Irona as she picked up her broom to join them, running her fingers over the wood. It was an old school broom and it had seen some tough times, its wood notched, scarred and pitted.

'You didn't say it,' she murmured beside him, running her fingers around the outline of a circular burn mark.

Draco shrugged but she didn't see it. 'It would have been below the belt.'

'We both know I can't do this, Draco,' she said, looking up. 'You said so yourself. 'Best of a bad lot',' she repeated.

Yes, he had said that, hadn't he? It really was about time that he started thinking before he opened his mouth. 'We'll see,' he said. 'We have time before the match.'

Above their heads, the two Beaters barely managed to avoid a collision attempting a complicated two-person Catherine wheel stunt. Eric pulled up sharply into a near-90° climb, the bristles of his Nimbus slicing through the air where Arnaud had been a moment before and was now hanging from his broom by one hand.

'Oh for Merlin's sake…' Draco sighed and turned back to Irona, searching for a change of conversation. 'What do you think of the team?'

'Yeah. You could have warned me,' she said and grinned at him. 'Although I don't think any warning you could have given me would have been enough! What's with the Chasers?'

'They're unhappy to have lost one of their number. Jehovah Carlyle. He transferred to Durmstrang this year. I think Blucas might integrate with them though.'

'What was his nickname?' Irona asked.

'Total Biscuit. He had a habit of staring at his hand with a great deal of fixedness as though he expected it to take on a life of its own and attack him.'

'Uh-huh?' she said, nodding slowly. 'I know we Slytherin Purebloods are often lumped with unfortunate names but I think Jehovah has to take the proverbial, uh, biscuit,' Irona said dryly, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. 'What happened to the Vincemeister and the Gregdude though? I thought they were the Beaters.'

Draco snorted. 'Fat load of use those two were,' he said irritably. 'Warrington thought that what they lacked in brain could be made up for with brawn. Now get up there, I don't want to be out here all night.'

---

It was seven o'clock by the time practice finished. The light was beginning to fade and there was a noticeable chill in the air foretelling a cold, hard winter ahead. Draco packed the balls away and locked up the broom shed. Irona might not be such a bad Seeker after all, he mused as he walked back to the Castle. As her confidence on the broom had increased so had her throwing and catching skills.

Blucas, too, had shown promise and Draco's greatest worry - that Hawk and Red Eye would refuse to work with him - had been put to rest. They were a team and as such, only the team mattered, not the individuals within it. They had a goal and they were absolutely united in their desire to attain it.

He reached the main doors and stopped. Hogwarts loomed above him when he craned his neck back and looked up. From the moment he had first laid eyes on it as a First Year Draco had never liked the Castle. He didn't like the people within it or the fact that his House was relegated to the Dungeons and sometimes he could sense a feeling of antipathy coming from the stones themselves. _Slytherin's child, _it seemed to whisper. _Slytherin's child you are not welcome here! _

He pushed open the door and headed down the steps leading to the dungeons and found someone again waiting for him. This time, however, Professor Snape, who nodded at him and told Draco that there was something he needed to speak to him about in private.

Snape led the way to his private office and Draco felt his heart sink. Snape's brusque manner meant that Draco was at fault and that in the absence of Draco's father, Snape had taken it upon himself to discipline the young Malfoy.

No reward for guessing what this was going to be about. Draco steeled himself for what was coming as Snape ushered him inside and closed the door and placed a Silencing Charm on the room.

'Sir, I can explain-' Draco started but Snape held up a thin hand to cut off any explanation Draco might offer.

'Let me speak Mister Malfoy,' Snape said softly, standing at the fireplace with his back to Draco. This was a bad sign; Snape almost never called Draco 'Mister Malfoy'. 'There is a very important matter I wish to discuss with you. You are aware of the rumours circulating about you and Mister Potter no doubt.'

Draco cringed. 'Yes sir,' he said quietly.

'As your Head of House and Godfather Mister Malfoy, it is my duty not only to teach you but also to advise you to the best of my ability about anything you should have doubts about.'

Draco was…surprised. This wasn't how most of Snape's disciplinary meetings started. 'Sir?' he asked.

Snape remained by the fireplace, he appeared to staring into the flames with a very great deal of fixedness as he continued, 'One of doubts might feasibly be connected to your…_preferences_.'

'Oh.' Draco thought he knew where this was going now. It was also possibly worse than the tongue-lashing he'd expected about thinking and speaking and the connections between both those actions. He didn't think anyone in Slytherin had _ever_ gone to Professor Snape with questions about what their body was doing in the middle of the night. It would be like discussing sex with your grandparents. Besides, Draco knew he wasn't the only one who doubted whether Snape would have had any, uh, practical experience in that particular field.

'I'm not gay, Professor,' he said and hoped that that might be the end of it.

'Of course,' Snape said and continued, much to Draco's chagrin. 'Of course there's nothing wrong with being gay, although it is technically illegal. Still, there are many archaic laws that should have been changed long ago.'

'I'm _not_ gay,' Draco repeated, a little more loudly this time just in case the Professor's hearing was temporarily impaired.

Snape did indeed appear to have gone deaf. He began to pace about the room as he continued, apparently reading from a script he had memorised. 'Now I know you must be feeling quite confused; that is quite natural and you must take care not to listen to what other people say. Homosexuality, despite some persistent ideas, is not a disease and cannot be 'cured'. You must be yourself Mister Malfoy, despite what you might hear said against you.'

Draco squirmed on his seat and very nearly put his hands over his ears. 'Father would disown me,' he pointed out and then kicked himself mentally for prolonging this conversation.

'Your father wants the best for you,' Snape replied, 'and you never know, he might just understand.'

No, nonono _no_. Draco cringed as his brain latched on to the ambiguity in Snape's words and started drawing various lovely mental images that he didn't want. 'My mum and dad love each other all right?' he said frantically 'and for Merlin's sake! I'm NOT GAY!'

'Whatever you say,' Snape answered, not listening to him at all. 'All I'm asking is that you be…discreet in any, uh, l_iaisons_.'

Draco was never going to be able to look at his godfather in the same way, ever again. 'There aren't going to be any liaisons!' he said desperately. Especially not with Potter. The very idea was disgusting.

Snape stopped pacing and finally turned to face him. 'For the love of- Why _Potter_, Draco?' he exclaimed, '_Any_one other than Potter!'


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6:

AN: This is not a chapter I'm happy with. Quidditch is extremely hard to write from a spectator's POV. Anyway, as the day of the big match looms near, Hermione and Irona have an interesting talk about Harry, Draco and inter-House relations; Harry has a disturbing dream about one of the Professors and Slytherin and Gryffindor meet, for the last time.

Do I need reviews? I ask you, does a bear defecate in the woods?

---

The following two weeks saw the school winding up to fever pitch in anticipation of the start of the Quidditch season. Pools were started on who was set to win this year with Gryffindor and Gryffindor tied. Everyone - even the Slytherins - acknowledged that Harry Potter was the better Seeker but this was Malfoy's last chance to beat him and no one was willing to speculate just how far Slytherin would go to win this year.

With the only topic of conversation to be heard around the school was related to Quidditch and gaudy red and gold banners strung across the Common Room, Hermione decided that she had had enough and took herself and her books off to the library. She took over a little corner right at the back where she could have a little time to herself and study in piece and as the days went past she found herself spending more and more of her free time there.

She was there, in fact, when Irona found her late Friday evening.

'Hey Granger.'

Hermione looked up sharply. 'Oh! Hello,' she said, taken aback to see the Slytherin standing there, two thick leather-bound books tucked under one arm. Although they sometimes smiled or nodded when they passed each other in the corridors, they hadn't spoken since term had started.

'Mind if I join you?' Irona asked. 'I hope I'm not interrupting but this is the only time I could catch you when you were alone.'

How very peculiar, Hermione thought. Courtesy was unknown from the Slytherins, especially from Purebloods. 'Of course,' she said and cleared a space for Irona to put her books down.

The Slytherin sat down with a grateful sigh and placed her books down with a little more force than was needed. Quidditch Through the Ages and The Complete Guide to Quidditch Fouls Hermione read off the spines. The book of fouls was actually larger than the history of the game itself.

'Just a little light reading,' Irona explained. 'Before tomorrow.'

'There's no getting away from the damned sport, is there?' Hermione sighed, more to herself than to Irona. New heights of insanity had indeed been reached when students were researching the finer points of the game.

'No-one's safe,' Irona agreed, 'least of all me seeing as I'm playing.'

That was news to Hermione. 'What about Malfoy?' she asked. It was inconceivable that he would miss a game.

'Broke his arm in that friendly during the try-outs. Pomfrey forbade him from playing the first match and so I'm playing instead. He wanted it kept quiet but I guess there's no harm in telling you now.'

'Guess not,' Hermione said and smiled. If she saw Harry later tonight, she'd mention it to him. 'How's it going?'

Irona looked down at the table for a moment before answering. 'Not well,' she admitted, raking a hand through her hair and Hermione noticed how exhausted she looked. There were deep shadows under her eyes and there was a downward turn to her mouth. Her manner and movements radiated listlessness and weariness. 'Why do they take it so seriously?' she was saying, her hand gestures encompassing the entire school. 'They've all gone Quidditch mad and it's just a bloody game with blatant phallic symbolism and a ridiculous number of fouls and!'

'Why do you think I'm in here?'

'It's awful,' Irona went on, 'Draco's become some kind of vengeance-crazed demon; the rest of the team are biggest bunch of freaks you're ever likely to meet outside of a circus freak show; I don't have a snowball's chance in hell tomorrow but if I lose…Slytherin will crucify me.'

There wasn't much Hermione could say except to wish her good luck, which she did and felt traitorous for doing so.

'I'll need it,' Irona said and then changed the subject briskly. 'Anyway, I didn't come here to moan at you. You must have heard the rumours about Draco and Potter.'

'Who hasn't?' Hermione retorted. 'If the school isn't talking about Quidditch then it's eagerly discussing the newest slew of rumours about their sex lives. They're nothing but rubbish,' she said dismissively.

'Of course; Draco wouldn't have the stamina to do it three times in one night and I have my doubts about him being a 'top' as well.' Irona let that sink in for a beat, watching Hermione go bug-eyed. 'Gotcha,' she said and winked.

'You're sick…' was all Hermione could say when she was able to speak again.

'And you're far too easy to shock,' Irona smirked. 'Seriously though, how can you be sure that there's not a little smidgen of truth in these rumours?'

'Because I'd know,' Hermione said firmly. There was a reason she was known as the smartest witch at Hogwarts.

'How?' Irona challenged her. 'How could you presume to know something like that?'

Hermione was unused to being challenged. 'Because… because Harry would tell me something like that!' she protested and knew she was wrong before she had finished uttering the words.

'Would you tell Potter if you suddenly realised that you were attracted to girls rather than boys, Granger?' Irona asked her sceptically, 'I seriously doubt it.'

'What's all this about anyway?' Hermione asked her crossly.

'I want you to think about what it would mean for the school if Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy were to be together. Can you do that?'

'As in _dating_?' It was Hermione's turn to be sceptical. 'It's a preposterous idea,' she scoffed and wondered if she had heard correctly. 'They hate each other.'

'And as that old cliché goes; it's a fine line between love and hate,' Irona rejoined swiftly. 'What if they learnt to love each other? What happens then to all the prejudice and 'bad blood' between the Houses?'

'It's a nice idea,' Hermione admitted. 'But it's just…' Implausible? Impossible? Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter were opposites in every way imaginable. There was also another problem. 'You don't even know if they're gay.'

'That's easy to find out.'

'Even if they are, that doesn't mean there's an attraction there or even that one could develop. It's a crazy idea!'

Irona nodded and pushed herself to her feet with a sigh. 'Well something needs to be done Granger,' she said, gathering up her books.

'You and Malfoy _were_ installed as Deputy Head Boy and Girl,' Hermione pointed out, somewhat sharply.

'Yeah. 'G'night, Granger.'

Alone again, Hermione sat back and wondered what to make of the conversation. Whilst she had no problem admitting that there was a problem at the school, it struck her as incredible that a Slytherin would not only admit it, but would seek her out with an idea to remedy it.

And what an idea! Hermione smiled to herself as she tidied away her work. Matchmake Harry and Malfoy in order to… what? Set an example to the rest of the school?

She bid Madam Pince a quiet goodnight as she made her way out of the Library and back to the Gryffindor dorm room. She checked her watch and realised that it was much later than she had thought it was. It was a quarter to nine and the deserted corridors have Hermione the hope that she'd be able to do some quiet reading by the fire when she got back.

It turned out to be false hope. She could hear the music before she could even see the Fat Lady. By the time she was standing in front of the portrait, she could even hear individual voices. 'Legaslitus Deroonean,' she said carefully. It was the Latin name of a poisonous purple-leafed plant and it was very easy to mispronounce.

'What?' the Fat Lady said and Hermione noticed that she was wearing pink earmuffs, presumably to block out the sound.

'Legaslitus Deroonean,' Hermione repeated, a little louder this time. There was a piercing laugh from inside the Common Room and which made the Fat Lady flinch. It had to have been Lavender Brown, Hermione thought. Only she could achieve that punishing pitch.

'Oh dear, oh dear,' the Fat Lady moaned, holding her hands over her earmuffs. 'I can't hear a word you're saying you know but I don't care.' The Portrait swung outwards quickly and Hermione was suddenly assaulted by a wall of noise which might have been music under all the bass.

She climbed through, lips pursed and scowling and tried to figure out what exactly was going on. She settled for stomping over to where Ron was stood protectively by the stereo - and therefore was responsible for the aural damage she was currently suffering - and turning it off, with more force than was probably necessary.

'Hey!' Ron protested as the room was quickly silenced, everyone turning to watch them. 'You can't do that Hermione!'

'Oh yes I can,' she said haughtily. I am Head Girl after all. It's far too late for that to be quite so loud. There are people who may be trying to work, or sleep.'

'Tonight?' he scoffed. 'Give me a break, Hermione. Besides, Harry's Head Boy so you can't do anything,' he said and with that turned the damn thing on again.

Hermione jabbed it off, again, her scowl deepening.

'Oh come on Hermione,' Ginny pleaded, coming over to them, a wine glass in her hand. 'Stop being a spoilt-sport and join in!'

'That had better be lemonade in that glass Virginia,' Hermione said severely and Ginny mumbled something under her breath, colouring slightly.

'Ron,' came Harry's voice and Hermione turned to see him sitting in a far corner looking distinctly ill and uneasy. 'Just turn it down a little will you?'

Ron turned the stereo on again, adjusting the volume slightly and glaring at Hermione as he said, 'Sure thing, Harry.' Then he turned his back on her to talk to Dean about something. From his gestures, Hermione guessed it was Quidditch related.

'Come on Hermione, we haven't seen you in ages,' Ginny said and grabbed her arm to pull her off towards where Lavender and few other sixth year girls were sitting.

Hermione pulled away sharply. 'I've been busy,' she said loudly enough for Ginny to hear her over the music. 'Besides if Miss Brown lets loose another of her piercing laughs then I will in all likelihood sustain two burst eardrums. No thank you. I'm tired and I'm going to bed.'

Ginny stood there and then shrugged. 'Fine,' she said and walked off without so much as a goodnight. Like Ron, Ginny had changed over the summer and for the worst. Hermione made a mental note to find out why and pushed her way over to where Harry was slumped in an armchair by himself.

'Hi,' he shouted as she approached and gave her a weak smile.

Hermione crouched beside him and yelled into his ear, 'What's going on?'

'It's a party,' he yelled back. 'Ron's idea. A pre-victory one.'

'But the match hasn't been played yet!' Hermione said. Harry just shrugged. It was understandable. Gryffindor had reigned undefeated for the last years, why would this year be any different. Why not celebrate their inevitable victory early? Hermione felt a pang of sympathy for Irona. She had no chance tomorrow.

'Malfoy's not playing tomorrow,' she told him. 'Pomfrey forbade him after he broke his arm. It's that new girl instead.'

'I'd hate to be in Slytherin right now,' he laughed. 'Malfoy must be having a temper tantrum having lost his final chance to try and beat me. Look Hermione, I need to go to bed.' It was the wrong thing to say as Hermione went into maternal mode.

'Are you OK?' she asked hurriedly. 'It's your scar, isn't it?'

'It's nothing,' Harry muttered getting up. 'Really,' he said sharply as she went to say something else. 'No reason at all to tell Dumbledore.'

Hermione gave in grudgingly. 'If you say so Harry.' Her tone of voice implied that whatever Harry thought was obviously wrong.

She was standing there, arms crossed and scowling. He had to give her something or he'd be in for another series of lectures about trusting Dumbledore and taking care of himself. 'I'll tell Dumbledore if anything happens, all right?' he promised.

She accepted the compromise with bad grace. 'All right,' she said, rolling her eyes. They both knew that was the sensible thing to do and therefore not what Harry would choose to do.

They said goodnight and went their separate ways.

----

_It's nothing really_ had been something of an understatement. Harry had woken that morning with his scar searing and burning but the pain had abated during breakfast to a dull ache that he had been able to ignore for most of the day.

Now, however, it was hurting more than ever. Sharp, piercing pains that came in waves and felt like someone was splitting his head open with a knife. He stumbled up the stairs to his room and fell onto his bed, holding his aching head in his hands until the pain abated enough for him to undress hurriedly and climb into bed. Hermione had reluctantly agreed to brew him a numbing potion for over the summer and he fumbled in the drawer beside his bed for the little vial, downed it in one gulp. It wasn't completely effective but it did help reduce the pain from crippling to intensities that were more manageable.

He lay back and let the potion take effect. Hermione had flavoured the second batch she made with strawberry after Harry had thrown up after taking it the first time. The party would go on late into the night, he mused, which suited Harry just fine. He didn't feel like talking to anyone right now. He cast a silencing charm around his bed just in case and when the pain in his forehead diminished back to the same dull ache it had been all day, Harry was soon asleep.

He dreamed he was standing in a small clearing in the middle of a dense forest, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dark. Their trunks contorted into grotesque shapes and their branches reaching towards the skies, the trees were older than any other Harry had ever seen. There was a full moon in the sky overhead but little moonlight was able to penetrate the thick covering of leaves to reach the clearing below.

The sound of footsteps made him duck behind the nearest tree, straining to hear from which direction the noise came. There it was again, a faint sound at the threshold of his hearing like that which would be made if someone were to be walking through the trees trying to make as little noise as possible; a twig crunching underneath a boot.

Holding his breath, Harry peered round the tree very slowly so that he just about make out the clearing in front of him. It was empty but he could just about make out darker shapes moving through the trees. He knew what they were, of course. Death Eaters! He hunkered down as six figures stepped into the clearing awaiting the arrival of their master.

As Harry watched, all six seemed to sense something and knelt in a loose semicircle. Harry stifled a gasp as a tall figure stepped into the clearing and his scar erupted in searing agony.

'My Lord,' the kneeling Death Eaters spoke, their heads hidden under their hoods bowed.

Lord Voldemort walked slowly around the group until he stood behind them and slipped his wand out from where it had been hidden in his cloak. 'My faithful,' he whispered, drawing out the word. 'My most loyal followers. Stand up.' A hissing sound issued from his hood that made Harry's skin crawl. Lord Voldemort was laughing. He pointed his wand at the back on one of his Death Eaters and whispered '_Crucio_!'

The figure fell to its knees again, a high-pitched scream ripped from its throat. Harry flinched and hid behind the tree again, swallowing down the bile that rose in his throat. When he next looked, the Death Eater was gasping for air and Voldemort was again standing in front of his followers 'My- my Lord!' he managed to gasp out.

'Finite Incantum,' Voldemort hissed. The figure slowly rose to his feet, breath coming in loud harsh gulps.

'My Lord,' the man said in a strained voice. 'Forgive me Master. I did not know that the man would not have the information we sought Lord-'

'Be quiet!' Voldemort ordered and the man fell silent. 'Because of your failure Doyle, my enemies have gained some insight into my plans and I am forced to consider other actions.' He pointed his wand at the trembling man. '_Crucio_! Silencio!'

Harry watched aghast as the man feel to the ground again, his hood slipping away from his face as he threw his head back, his screams inaudible. Harry's attention was drawn back to Lord Voldemort and he swore to himself as he realised he'd missed what the monster had been saying. A Death Eater stepped forward from the group and knelt at Voldemort's feet to kiss the hem of his robes. Harry felt a shock run through him as the figure spoke. It was a woman's voice but softer than Bellatrix Lestrange's. 'Tell me how to serve you, my Lord.'

'Bring me the boy Malfoy denied me,' he said.

The woman nodded and stepped back into the semicircle. 'Yes Master. Of course Master.'

Voldemort turned away and stood over the man still suffering under the effects of the Cruciatus Curse. He had stopped writhing and was now a still form on the ground, twitching every now and then. His hood had slipped off completely revealing a head of dark red curls and a face that would have been handsome had it not been contorted in agony.

Harry hid again as Voldemort pointed his wand at the prone figure but the expected Avada Kedavra never happened, rather Harry heard Voldemort whisper '_Finite Incantum_!'

'My Lord is merciful,' the man managed to say brokenly. He didn't attempt to move.

'Do not fail me again Doyle,' Voldemort warned and then Disapparated with a sharp crack. The Death Eaters disappeared into the trees again, none saying a word to the others. Harry saw the woman hesitate before she stepped out of the clearing and look around her. Then she suddenly turned and looked right at him.

Harry gasped and fell backwards-

-and woke up. He lay in the tangle of his bedclothes, staring around him in the dark. He was in his dorm room and alone. He could hear faint laughter coming up from downstairs and glanced at the clock beside him. In the darkness, the illuminated hands showed that it was only half past eleven; he felt like he had been asleep for hours already. Harry lay back, closed his eyes, and tried to calm his breathing. Tried to think. Two years of regular dream visions had made them easier to cope with but they still left him feeling shaken and vulnerable.

Hermione would tell him to go to Dumbledore but Harry wanted to confirm his suspicions before he took them to the Headmaster. More and more witches and wizards swelled the Death Eater ranks each day; it was common - if unspoken - knowledge that Britain was heading for a full-blown civil war. It was logical that Bellatrix Lestrange would not have been Voldemort's only female Death Eater-

The Marauder Map, of course! Why hadn't he thought of it before now? Harry scrambled to the end of his bed and opened his trunk. A good few minutes of rummaging later and he found it. He laid it in front of him and grabbed his wand.

'_Lumos!_' he whispered and held the wand tip over the map. 'I solemnly swear I'm up to no good,' he recited and watched breathlessly as the lines of black ink began appearing across the parchment. He scanned it quickly. Snape was in his quarters; McGonagall in her; Sinistra was in the Astronomy Tower…she wasn't there! Harry checked it twice just to make sure but there was little doubt about it.

Lillith de Malfoi was not in the Castle.

---

Saturday morning dawned grey and dull; the cool breeze doing little to shift the thick covering of cloud that was blocking out the sun. Perfect Quidditch conditions, mused Draco Malfoy, who then spat on the ground. It was a disgusting habit his father had never been able to train out of him; he had even resorted to beating him but to no avail. Privately, Draco thought to himself that torturing and killing Muggles and Mudbloods was more disgusting and unbecoming of someone like his father as spiting was but he had learnt quickly that thoughts like those safer kept to himself.

Besides, his father was all-but under house arrest. What the elder Malfoy didn't see, he couldn't punish the younger for.

Draco shivered a little and drew his cloak tighter around him; it wasn't cold by any standards but he had been sitting out here for a good half hour already. Madam Pomfrey had removed the cast over a week ago but his arm was still bruised, tender and unable to carry heavy weight.

He looked towards the castle and saw the first group of students making their way down the sloping lawns towards the pitch, his team - some of them already changed - amongst them. He made his way down onto the pitch to meet them at the changing room.

'Good morning,' Blaise said cheerfully. He was already changed but Marlowe and Arnaud were not. They were absorbed in a whispered conversation and barely acknowledged Draco as they walked past him into the changing rooms.

'I do not see what so good about it,' Draco replied testily, scowling at the Beaters' backs.

'Look, I know you're sore about not being able to play,' he said calmly ignoring the black look Draco turned on him. 'But we have a good team and you've worked hard with Irona.'

'She's no match for Potter,' Draco said, nodding over Blaise's shoulder to where the Gryffindor team were arriving. The students already settling themselves on the benches cheered as Harry Potter arrived flanked by Weasley and Granger as usual. Granger gave both him and Weasley a chaste peck on the cheek before she went off to sit down.

'No match whatsoever,' Draco repeated and turned away before he spat again. Blaise would have something to say about such behaviour and Draco didn't fancy hexing his Keeper before the game even started.

'Who is?' the other retorted and then touched his friend warningly on the arm. 'Draco…'

Draco turned around to see Potter walking towards them. 'What do you want?' he sneered as Potter neared them. 'If it's to beg us to play nicely and be gentle with you then I'm afraid the answer's no.'

Potter was unfazed by the sarcasm. 'I hear you're not playing today Malfoy,' he said.

'Ten points to Gryffindor for your absolutely _astounding_ powers of observation!' Blaise remarked softly, not smiling, his eyes never leaving Potter's face for a moment. 'How ever did you find out?'

'Who's your replacement?' Potter continued, ignoring Blaise.

Draco could feel his face reddening as he fought to control his temper. Just like Potter to rub it in. Just what Draco himself would've done in the same position… 'I guess you'll find out, won't you?' he said sharply. The benches were filling rapidly now and he could see the rest of the team approaching. Irona was walking next to Professor Snape a little behind them.

Potter followed Draco's gaze. 'I heard it was her,' he said, turning back to Draco with a wide, satisfied smile. 'Well, it's always good to have new blood. May the best team win and all that.'

'Fuck off, Potter,' Blaise said pleasantly as he walked off.

Draco was glaring at Potter as he chatted to his teammates as though hoping sheer force of will could be enough to make him spontaneously combust. 'As Merlin is my witness,' he vowed, 'I will make Potter pay' For every humiliation he had suffered at the hands of the self-righteous Gryffindor bastard-

'Yes Inigo,' Blaise was saying, grabbing his arm and dragging him into the changing room after the rest of the team. 'You will have your vengeance. Right now, however, there are other things to attend to.'

Draco blinked, 'What? Right, listen up,' he said sharply, waiting until he had their attention. 'I'm going to be blunt here: we can't afford to lose this match.' Right at the back, pulling her robes on over her head, Irona snorted quietly to herself. 'I'm sorry, I missed that. Would you mind repeating that for the rest of the team to hear?' he said sharply.

Irona shook her head without looking up at him. 'It wasn't important,' she said.

'Then don't interrupt me again. As you all know, this is the last chance we will have as a team to beat Gryffindor and Harry Potter.' The cheering outside was reaching deafening levels as the game neared its start. 'Blaise is acting as Captain for this game. Marlowe and Blucas, I want the two of you to keep the pressure on their new Chaser. Girl with blonde hair called Milner. She is the probable weak spot in their line up. All right, good luck.'

Outside, a whistle had been blown. It was time. In single file, with Blaise at their head, the Slytherin team filed out and onto the pitch. Draco followed them out and climbed up the steps into the stands where Professor Snape was sitting at the end of the front row, a green and red scarf wrapped round his neck. 'May I sit with you, sir?' he asked. The professor had half the row to himself.

Snape glanced up and then shifted along the bench a little to make room for Draco to sit down. 'Of course, Draco.'

They watched the start of the game in silence. Gryffindor had taken possession of the Quaffle first but Marlowe and Arnaud were doing a good job of keeping the Chasers occupied and Irona was circling the pitch above the two teams, in the opposite direction to Harry Potter.

'-it's Slytherin with the Quaffle. Er, O'Grady passes to Merritt; he dodges a Bludger - bad luck - and passes to, er, Mucas. Er, he's passed it to, er, no he's dropped it, and Gryffindor have the Quaffle. Er, oh dear… oh Gryffindor score!'

Lee Jordan's commentary had - in Draco's opinion - always left something to be desired. He had often entertained fantasies of a Bludger connecting with Jordan's smug face when the commentator had let his mouth run away with him but what he would not give for the boy now. The boy who had replaced him this year was a Hufflepuff whose name might have been Bernie, or Earnest or something equally as ridiculous. Draco was lost for a surname, all he knew was that he had been a Hufflepuff prefect, spoke to Harry Potter on occasion and had once tried to give Blaise Zabini a detention. Tried being the operative word seeing as Pansy had heard about it, taking Bernie aside and shortly thereafter he had apologised to Blaise and rescinded the detention.

Draco was in a prime position to see that he was sweating and red-faced as he tried to follow the frantic action and remember the player's names.

'He's actually being booed more than we are, isn't he sir?' Draco said, thoroughly enjoying seeing the boy mess up.

'What else does he expect if he can't even remember the players' names?' Snape replied evenly but Draco detected an undercurrent of amusement in the Professor's words.

'- Er, Bell with the Quaffle, she dodges a Bludger from, er, the French one and reverse-passes to Ginny Weasley, she dodges a Bludger and passes back to Katie Bell who's off up the pitch now. C'mon Gryffindor!'

Arnaud was not going to be happy about being called 'the French one' Draco mused to himself. It was also likely that Alexander Blucas would have something to say about his renaming to 'Mucas'.

Gryffindor were twenty-nil up and close to making that lead thirty-nil when Draco saw the Chasers moving into position to set up the surprise move they'd been practicing. He glanced up, saw Irona change direction in mid-flight and sweep back across the pitch to be on the far side of Blucas. He held his breath as Bernie continued to make a hash of the commentary.

'- Ginny catches the Quaffle - bravo! - and races up the field. She's…she's… oh no! She takes a Bludger from Slytherin to the head and drops it. It's, er, O'Grady with the Quaffle, O'Grady races past Katie Bell, dodges a Bludger by a hair's breadth and races towards the goal, she's blocked by Marlowe, the big ape that he is, and- and- it's Merritt with the Quaffle, Merritt and O'Grady and Blucas in a triangular formation!-'

Behind Draco, the Slytherin students began to cheer, stamping their feet and clapping in time as the three Chasers (and Irona, overlooked at the far edge) began streaking towards the Gryffindor goal posts. In a matter of seconds, the stadium was rebounding to the thundering chorus of '_SLYTHERIN! SLYTHERIN! SLYTHERIN!_' Bernie couldn't make himself heard over it but Draco could follow the action easily enough as first Blucas and then Red Eye peeled away from Hawk, blocking Bludgers and the Gryffindor Chasers from intercepting. Irona pulled her broom into a sharp sideways turn, speeding towards the centre of the pitch as Hawk approached the goal posts. For a moment Draco thought he'd score himself without having to pass but Katie Bell came diving in from the side - Draco was on his feet, the chant swelling as Hawk passed to his left and Irona shot past him, the Quaffle under her arm, dodged Weasley and threw the Quaffle threw the centre goalposts, returning to her circling a moment later.

Draco had thought the chanting could not get any louder but this goal proved him wrong as the Slytherin students reached throat-destroying volume. Draco joined them, pumping his fist in the air. He saw Professor Snape clapping slowly out of the corner of his eye, an expression on his face many would not have recognised as being pride.

'A masterful goal, Draco,' he said, noting Draco's gaze. 'A very good manoeuvre.'

Draco swelled a little at his Professor's praise. Snape was sparse with his compliments, even towards his godson. 'Thank you, Professor,' he said. 'She's turned out to be an adequate Seeker.' He neglected to add that his intensive regimen of training and practice had soured their friendship.

However, Irona's goal seemed to be exactly what Slytherin needed. A minute or so later Red Eye was able to capitalise on a mistake made by Ginny Weasley to bring the scores to twenty-all and Bernie was once again drowned out by cheers and boos. Gryffindor scored twice more in the next ten minutes but each time Slytherin was able to equalise soon after and there had been no sight of the Snitch.

'It's Bell with the Quaffle, passes to Weasley, who's hit by a Bludger from Arnold of Slytherin-' Draco swore he heard a low chuckle from Professor Snape at that one but when he glanced over, Snape was looking intently upwards, no sign of mirth on his face. '-dropped by Mucas, Gryffindor are back in possession. Ginny drops it, caught by O'Grady- that was a blatant foul! But no…er, O'Grady, ducks a Bludger, unfortunately, passes to Merritt-_it's the Snitch! Harry Potter has sighted the Snitch!_'

Draco's breath caught in his throat as Bernie shouted out what everyone had seen a moment earlier. Potter had suddenly dived towards the ground, heading for a glint of gold hovering by the Gryffindor posts. Irona was diving towards it too, arrowing towards Potter from the opposite side of the pitch, lying flat on her broom and, if the training sessions were anything to go by, cursing Draco to the deepest depths of Azkaban. They were neck and neck now, little more than streaks of colour and the Snitch was still hovering… Draco frowned. It was a feint! Potter would pull up at the last minute and Irona, on one of the school's inferior brooms would go ploughing into the ground. Draco leapt to his feet as they neared the Snitch, which suddenly streaked upwards, spiralling around the left-most goalpost. Potter pulled out of the dive first, pulling his broom into a sharp upwards angle that left the crowd gasping. Irona pulled up, curved around the goalpost, and spiralled around it at a dizzying speed, mirroring the Snitch.

Draco leapt to his feet, his fingers digging into the wooden frame of the stands as the Seekers rose higher and higher. Although Potter was in front, the snitch was steadily getting further and further away and when it curved away over his head and back towards the centre of the pitch, Irona was able to pull out of her climb before him. As they flew into the middle of the game, weaving through the players, Irona was finally in front.

'Draco…?' Snape said slowly beside him, his voice sounding as if it were coming to Draco from far away. He did not turn his head, could not tear himself away from the pitch. Irona was gaining on the Snitch, her arm outstretched as players on both teams flew out of her way.

Nearly…

Nearly…

Irona never saw it coming. The crowd, regardless of House, caught their breath as one as they saw one Bludger come screaming from the left and hit her broom with such force that it swung her around and right into the path of the second, hit by Seamus Finnegan that struck her in the face and sent her flying sideways off her broom and tumbling to the ground.

Draco had vaulted over the railing and was sprinting across the pitch as Potter dived after her and caught her a few feet above the ground. The crowd was in uproar and the teachers were having to act as a barrier between the Slytherin and Gryffindor students. Draco pushed through the players who were gathered about Potter. Many looked white-faced as they stepped aside for him to get through and Draco's fears were confirmed when he saw the spatters of blood on the front of Potter's robes.

Potter caught Malfoy's arm. 'Don't,' was all he said, but something in his voice made Draco stop. Irona was lying on the ground a little way off with madam Hooch kneeling beside her and blocking anyone from seeing the state the girl was in.

'Is she all right?' he demanded.

Madam Hooch was shouting for someone to run and find Professor McGonagall. 'She's in a bad way,' he said, absently rubbing his hands on his robes. There was blood on his hands, too.

Draco walked off as Professors McGonagall, Snape and Vector came running towards them and shooed away the players. He felt sick and disoriented, as though the world was spinning around him and he were spinning in the opposite direction. The Slytherin team came running towards him, shouting questions at him that he could not answer.

'Draco, what happens to the game?' Red Eye asked, a murderous look in his one good eye. 'Do we get to pay those bastards back for what they did to her?' There was a chorus of agreement from the rest of the team but Draco just shook his head.

'No,' he said quietly. 'No team can play without a Seeker. We are disqualified from this game. Gryffindor wins by default.'

And he, Draco Malfoy, had absolutely lost.

---

Please review, it makes this endeavour so much more worthwhile.  
Next - Hermione and Irona find that playing Cupid isn't as easy as it sounds.


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